NEMESIS?

By the same authorINSANITY FAIR

DISGRACE ABOUNDING

OTTO STRASSER

NEMESIS?The Story of Otto Strasser

and

The Black Front

by

DOUGLAS R E E D

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY • BOSTON1 94 0

COPYRIGHT, 1940, BY DOUGLAS REED

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCETHIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM

PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.

CONTENTSPREFACEDESERTED VILLAGESKETCH FOR A PORTRAITTHE STARTING GUNBELATED HOMECOMINGWAY OF A SOCIALISTHEIL AND FAREWELLBLACK FRONTCRAZY ODYSSEYNEMESIS IN THE SHADOWSFOURTH REICH?`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'

5

ILLUSTRATIONS

7

OTTO STRASSER

frontispieceOTTO STRASSER IN 1915

facing p. 27THE STRASSER FAMILY CIRCLE

30OTTO STRASSER IN 1914 34ERNST ROHM

by permission of Wide World Photos72

GREGOR STRASSERby permission of Wide World Photos

84HERBERT BLANK AND OTTO STRASSER 117HIMMLER AND HEYDRICH

by permission of the Associated Press145

ANTI-HITLERIST NEWSPAPERS 170GOEBBELS AND GORING

by permission of the Associated Press176

THE INN AT ZAHORI 184OTTO STRASSER AT THE GRAVE OF RUDOLF FORMIS 189

PREFACE

THIS book is about a German, Otto Strasser ; havingelbowed myself to the front of the stage in two books, Itake the part, in this one, of compere -the man whoopens the show, is often seen lurking in the wings while itprogresses, and from time to time, between the scenes,comes to the front of the stage to remind you that he isthere, that he holds the show together, and that it wouldnot be complete without him .Now that war has come, and the great question

which engrossed our thoughts for many years has beenanswered, new thoughts crowd to the foreground of ourminds, and foremost among them, the question, `WhatGermany will come of this war?' In the search for theanswer to it, Otto Strasser, of whom few people in Britainhad heard till war came, becomes a figure of importance .

He may play a great part in answering this question .I say may, because war is less predictable than peace ; itis the high-tension cable broken loose, thrashing aboutin all directions, you never know where, how, or whomit will strike ; the switchboard is no longer in control .

Many writers have shown that the events leading tothis war, and the war itself, could be exactly foretold : itwas their trade, and they were as well able to do this as adoctor is able, from specific symptoms, to foretell thecourse of some diseases ; and Lord Halifax, though heexpressed in this phrase the average state of mind of manyBritishers, only clothed a fallacy in words that sounded

9

NEMESIS?convincing when he once said `We distrust people whoforecast precisely the course of coming events'. This is auseful phrase to justify procrastination and non-exec tion,nothing more.

Politics, in peacetime, are an exact science - to thosewho know politicians . War, `the pursuit of politics withother means', draws a smoke-screen across the future .But this much I would wager now, at the dawn of 1940 :that Germany will not emerge from this war a Stateruled in absolute authority by Adolf Hitler and victor-ious over all enemies . Coming months or the next year ortwo will bring changes in Germany, and new men willbegin to take a hand in the leadership of the Reich .That will not be the end of our troubles - perhaps onlytheir beginning .Otto Strasser has many qualifications and some

chances, if he seizes them . Not many years ago Hitler,enthroned to-day on the lonely peaks of power, wasobscure ; Otto Strasser to-day is a little-known exile, butbefore long he may tread the upward path .After reaching manhood - which for my non-stop

generation meant the first outbreak of the present war,in 1914 - I lived longer, a t one stretch, in Germanythan in any other country, including my own . The studyof that strange Jekyll-and-Hyde country, the bane of ourtimes, engrosses me. Some months before the presentinstalment of the war broke out, feeling that it wascertainly coming, I began to think about and read aboutOtto Strasser, for I believed that when it came that lostlegion of the Germans, the exiles, would immediatelybegin to grow in importance, and among the most

I0

PREFACEimportant of them was this Otto Strasser . At that timemy mind was already browsing on conjecture about theGermany that would succeed Hitler's Germany ; but atthat time the British public mind did not look so farforward, or this book might have appeared earlier .

When the second outbreak of this war came, his namewas, in fact, at once heard, stimulating my interest evenmore, and an idea became an intention . In eveningstrolls through subdued, but not blacked-out Parisstreets, where shuttered shops showed the way that war,for the third time almost within living memory, haddrained the city of its manhood ; in quiet meals in Parisrestaurants, among elderly gentlemen who wore finenatural tonsures and were accompanied by fur-coatedblondes; in long afternoons and evenings of unremittingwork in hotel bedrooms I studied and questioned anddebated with Otto Strasser, learned of his struggles inthe past and his plans for the future .

The result engrossed me and left me with an ungovern-able itch to write . Not entirely on account of OttoStrasser's political beliefs and plans ; not entirely, even,on account of his personality, though I was happy andstimulated in his company, and got along very well withhim, as I often do with individual Germans ; but onaccount of the content of his life, which aroused in me allthe instincts of the teller-of-tales and made me impatientfor my typewriter .

I 'lived again, in those Parisian hours, the life of a manof The Other Side ; a life far more adventurous than myown, which has not been dull ; the life of another man ofour raging contemporary times, buffeted by all the

II

NEMESIS?winds that blow . A life, to me, far more , absorbing thanHitler's life . With and through him, I felt again the pulseof that seething, turbulent Germany that gives us all norest, of that repellent and fascinating land where I spentmany years .

The tale is told in this book. Otto Strasser's adventuresand his political thought interest me alike . It is for me anew undertaking to write another man's life and explainanother man's mind, for I have so much to say myself.I shall probably have to restrain myself by force fromrushing on to the stage from time to time and elbowingthe chief player aside . Somebody wrote of an earlierbook of mine that my great fault in it was to shake thefist of my personality in the reader's face, and that prob-ably was its chief merit. Nevertheless, short of an apo-plexy, I shall achieve some measure of self-effacementthis time .

The tale I have to tell is an important one . Hitler hasnearly played his part . He long has curdled our blood .He has been like a Silly Symphony Napoleon with a livebomb in his pocket; it was as if the grotesque child of somecomic artist's pen had suddenly stepped out of the screenand advanced upon a spellbound audience, firing realbullets from his gun .A few more melodramatic postures and gestures and

harangues, and he will be gone . From the wings alreadypeep the candidates for the succession, chief among themtwo men : Goring, fat, Falstaffian, Neronic, ruthless,cunning, world-famous ; and Otto Strasser, poor, un-known, outlawed, undaunted . They both mean you,just as Austria and Czechoslovakia and Poland meant

12

PREFACEyou. I wrote that in Insanity Fair and Disgrace Abounding,and it has come true . This is just as true .

Your courage, your resolution, your this-and-that, willnot help you if your rulers lose the peace. If they do that,your last state will be worse than your first, the going ofthe man Hitler will not profit you, your sufferings andyour sacrifices and courage in this new war will be invain, even your victory in it will be in vain, the nexttwenty years will . be even worse than the last . Thepeace-to-come is even more important than the war, andin your own lives you now have seen what it means tolose a peace, or rather, wantonly to throw away a victory,just from dislike of exertion and of a stitch-in-time, fromputting your trust in a burglar out of fear of a bogyman .

This is the importance of the tale that is told in thisbook .

CHAPTER I

DESERTED VILLAGE

I HOMED to England, after many years abroad, in thespring of 1939. I had seen the invasions of Austria andCzecho-Slovakia and, as I came through Poland on myhomeward way, clearly saw that that country would bethe next victim, and I wrote this in Disgrace Abounding .I knew then, and also wrote, that our inevitable dilemma,the dilemma our foreign policy had made inevitable, nowlay close before us : either we must go to war withGermany, or we must capitulate and have the Germansin London .

I saw that only a few months would pass before thisdecision forced itself upon us, and I decided to use thattime to look at England, to try and understand the mindof a country that was my own, my native land, and yetwas more perplexing to me than any foreign one .I could not begin to understand the slothful scepticismwhich had defeated every effort to awaken the country tothe danger and thus to avert war . I could not under-stand the fear of exertion which seemed to underlie thatstate of mind . I could . not understand the way thecountry, on the one hand, passively allowed itsc-lf to drifttowards an avoidable war, and, on the other hand, per-mitted an enormous influx of unassimilable aliens whoseintention clearly was, when that war came, to burrowinto the places vacated by the young men of Britain whowould again be sent to fight .

I7

NEMESIS?Already, the state of England after the war that loomed

ahead was full of menacing shadows, but there seemed aslittle hope of awakening public opinion to these dangersas there had been of awakening it to the oncoming perilof war itself. The things that were best in England werebeing buried under an imported, alien way of life andway of thinking that made itself ever more master ofliterature and the Press, the stage and the films, radio andthe menu, art, parliamentary debates - everything .

We were going to war again to keep England's shoresinviolate, and at the same time we were opening theseshores to an alien influx the like of which they had neverseen. Maddest of all, the craziest thing that I ever saweven in the madhouse Insanity Fair, we were about togive these new-comers preferential treatment in our ownland over the country's own sons ; they were to be putinto posts liberated by the young men who went off towar, and at the price of `joining-up' themselves theycould even acquire British citizenship - but the condi-tion of that 'joining-up', set out in black and white, wasthat they never should be sent to the front! Their liveswere to be preserved at all cost, so that they could live inpeace and prosperity in England after the war ; andsimultaneously the lives of young Englishmen were oncemore to be squandered .

No words are adequate to describe this lunacy . I hadseen the thing coming and written this, in DisgraceAbounding, and .now it had come. Both the things I hadforeseen and feared had come - the war, which wouldtake another British generation off to battle, and thealien influx, which would rot the roots of British life still

I$

DESERTED VILLAGEfurther . It was a cheerless prospect. At that rate, weshould not be better off after the war, whether we wonor lost it ; but for the new comers, it was heads-we-winand tails-you-lose . I had seen them playing with thatcoin in Berlin and Vienna .We seemed to have tied ourselves inseparably to a

policy of adding one mistake to another . The state ofEngland did not bode well .

So, in that discontented summer, I set out on a series ofEnglish journeys, and shall describe the things I saw inanother book. To a patriot in search of his homeland,they were not reassuring ; rather, they deepened his fears,and after this war, if the same policy be continued, youwill see that they were well-founded. These journeysshowed me many things, and led me to strange places,and one of these places, where I made up my mind towrite a book about Otto Strasser, was the strangestof all .

Turning things over in my mind, I went along a lonelystretch of coast and suddenly came upon Goldsmith'sDeserted Village, a weird, spectral place hidden beneaththe cliff until you suddenly encountered it .

A ruined inn ; roofless and wall-less houses ; gaping andshingle-buried streets ; an odd flower poking its headthrough the debris to show where a garden had been ;fragments of ancient wall-paper ; rusty grates, wherefires once had warmed tired fishermen ; a chicken or twopecking about; a solitary, tousle-headed woman, with abright eye and one tooth in her head, who leaned againsta wall and watched me as I came. The most uncannyplace, where the crunching of my feet on the shingle took

19

NEMESIS?on a disturbing and disquieting sound, although the sunwas still high .

I saw the longing for talk lurking like an eager dog inthe old woman's eye and greeted her, and she gave me a'Good-day, master', and told me the story, a simple one .This was a busy fishing village and one night came a greatwave, the like of which none had ever seen, and justwrecked the village where it stood ; nobody had beenkilled, but the fishermen all elected to have new housesbuilt by the Government in a safer spot, a mile or soaway up on the cliffs and out of sight, and so all hadfled - all save she .

She chose, she did not tell me why, to have her houserebuilt where it stood and now she had lived these manyyears, all alone, in the one sound house in that wreckedhamlet. The bathing was good, and in the summer shehad a few lodgers ; and follow-my-nose sometimes led anodd motorist to her door, to whom she sold a cup of tea,but that was stopped now, because the authorities thoughtthe little road down from the cliff-top dangerous and hadput a bar across it, so that follow-my-nose stopped at thetop and never scented the ruined village below . Andnow the war on top of that, and no holidaymakers . Andthe blackout on top of that .The blackout! Among these ruins, her one window

had shone yellow of nights, spilled its reflection into thewaves that nearly lapped her door . Through thatwindow, she could see the great light at the headland amile distant, that now in war, as in peace, cast its rollingeye for ever round and round, winking to all who wantedto know, British fishing boat and peeping German sub-

20

DESERTED VILLAGEmarine alike, `Here I am, Shingle Head ; here I am,Shingle Head ; Here I am, Shingle Head. . . .'The light had kept her company. But now she might

see it no more, of nights . For although all the visitorshad gone, and winter was nigh, and she seldom saw asoul, still the blackout man had been down and told herto douse that light . How the Big Light laughed, whenthe Little Light, its companion those many years, wentout! Now she sat all alone, in her little room in the onesound house in the ruined village, surrounded by thosebrick-and-mortar ghosts, and had blacked-out her littlewindow. She had not gas-proofed her little room ; shewas not educated enough for that . But how she hwtedthe blackout .

`Do you take lodgers at this time of year?' I said, whenshe finished .

`Yes, master', she said wonderingly .`Well, I'm doing nothing for a day or two, so I'll come

in,' said I, `I have a job of thinking to do, anyway .'It was a strange lodging . `Well, stap me and Heil Hitler,'

I thought,. when I surveyed it. It was nearly as damp as awell, but then, it was not much wider than a church door,and I had been in worse, though not in stranger places .

A good place to think. I thought about the war, andwhat would come -after it, leaned against the break-water, stirred the shingle with my foot, watched the sea-gulls . And at night we talked, and how we talked.

We agreed that the fishermen were right ; the Big Wavehad been caused by the county authorities taking toomuch sand from the foreshore; hadn't we always saidthat would lead to no good ; we talked about the German

2 1

NEMESIS?cook at the hotel up on the cliff, who had yielded to theentreaties of all who knew her not to leave them becauseof the war ; and we agreed that, all things considered, ifit had been us we would probably have gone home, nomatter how they coaxed us ; and the things we said aboutthe blackout! The old lady celebrated the festival ofSaint Garrulous ; she liked it .

And so did I, but at last I said, `I'm going now, I'mgoing to write a book, about England and Germany,and Goring and Otto Strasser, and how this war is goingto end, and what will come after it, and I'll probably comeand stay with you again about Christmas, so good-bye .'

`Well, I'm sorry you're going, master,' she said, `youwas good company for me . And are you going to write abook, out of your head?'

`I am,' I said, `I'm a slave to the habit. Some peoplecan take books or leave them alone, but I'm not likethat . I'm like the alcoholic subject, whose next drink isalways going to be his' last . I'm always full to burstingwith Treppenwitze.'

`What's that?' she asked .`The joke you think of after the party, when you're

going downstairs'., I said . `The things you wish you'd said .But I have the advantage of those tardy jesters - I alwaysgo back and work off my jokes, in another book . Nonecan escape me, and here I go .'

`Well, that's interesting,' she said, raking me with herbright but empty eye, `good-bye, master' .

I felt that eye in the middle of my back as I walked upthe cliff path . At the top I turned and waved . She stoodat the door of her house, among the skeletons of the homes

22

DESERTED VILLAGEof her childhood's friends, and the chickens pecked abouther feet .

I took train and ship for France, to seek Otto Strasser .The train dawdled . The ship waited for hours beforeeven setting forth, and as all the cabins were monopolizedI spent the night walking the deck . The next day, I wasin France, revelling in a glass of Dubonnet, a mouthfulof mushroom omelet, a half-pint of Clicquot, a marvel-lous contrecarree, a morsel of Brie, a coffee, and a GrandMarnier. 0, land of gastronomic perfection, of the art ofliving .

I strolled awhile about Paris, happy as a sandboy .The streets, for me, were full of the ghosts of the BritishArmy that rolled roaring down from the line in 1918 tocelebrate victory. Victory! Holy umbrellas!

I thus took a quick, deep breath of Paris, and thenwandered off to Montparnasse in search of Otto Strasser.Eventually I found him in a modest room in a smallhotel in a back street .

I had seen men in exile who became kings . I had seenkings who became men in exile. I had seen presidents inpalaces and in cheap lodgings . I had seen politiciansrise and fall like the bobbing celluloid ball on the water-spray at the shooting galleries . Here was a man who hadjust missed playing a big part, a man who had calledHitler a fraud when all others were acclaiming him agenius, a man whose time to play a big part again mightsoon be coming .

I plunged myself into the study of this man, OttoStrasser, and here he is .

Ring up the curtain!23

CHAPTER 2

SKETCH FOR A PORTRAIT

THE man whose picture is the frontispiece to this book isOtto Strasser . It is the best one I could find . In others,which I rejected, the photographers gave him theglowering glance, the clamped lips affected by all thedictators of our and other times, the mien of the strong-man-candidate-for-the-succession .

Otto Strasser may be that, but he does not customarilywear that familiar visage . His habitual expression is oneof vigour but also of smiling friendliness, and I do notmean that he smiles and smiles, but his natural disposi-tion is a cheerful and hearty one . He has not the innerhatred of life and of his fellow men which is Hitler's driv-ing instinct and which gives Hitler that suspicion-filled,my-hand-against-every-man's, don't-you-try-to-take-a-rise-out-of-me look .

Strasser is much more of a fighter than Hitler ; no mancould picture him dissolving into tearfiil self-commisera-tion at a setback or at the thought that the ultimateenemy of all men, the Marxist Death, cannot be put in aconcentration camp ; he revels even in a fight that is goingbadly, though in his heart is an unrelenting hatred of menwho owe him a debt written in blood, and if they comeinto his power they will pay in the coin they took .

But tl tt is not written in his face, because his innerman is not like this, and for that reason the picture is not

24

SKETCH FOR A PORTRAITgood. Twenty-five years of struggle, betrayal, disap-pointed hopes, embitterment, of unflagging pursuit andnarrow escape, have not chiselled hatred in his features,as it is chiselled in the features of men who have reachedthe highest peaks of power . He remains a merry fellow,who lives hard, loves hard, eats and drinks with enjoy-ment, carries on his one-man war with gusto, never for-gets his revolver, has a long score to settle, loves hiscountry, and likes to laugh .

He is the opposite of everything that Hitler is - Hitlerthe eclair-eater who preaches the spartan life ; Hitler thecelibate who preaches big families ; Hitler the chauffeur-driven and chauffeur-piloted armchair-sitter whopreaches sport and physical exercise ; Hitler the non-smoker, non-drinker and non-meat-eater who leads oneof the heaviest-eating and heaviest-drinking nations inEurope ; Hitler who preaches the fight-to-a-finish andorders unbeaten battleships to scuttle themselves . Hitler,who wrote Mein Kampf, has known little struggle in hislife ; he was carried in a sedan chair by an Al Caponebodyguard to the summits of power . Strasser has neverstopped fighting, since 194-

I should call him a typical German - not in the sensein which the term is currently used by Britishers who donot know Germany and who have in mind somethingrather fat, rather coarse, and over-portentous . The term,a typical Englishman, used by people of the same kind inGermany, also has an uncomplimentary significance ;English people would be genuinely startled to know thatthe German often finds in their physiognomy somethingthat reminds him of the Raubtier, the carnivore .

25

NEMESIS?I lived very long in Germany and mean, by a typical

German, an inexplicable mixture of good and bad, ofstaunchness, vigour, industry, thrift, humour, talent ; andof brutality, envy and insensitiveness . The Germans,incidentally, have a particularly keen sense of humour,and I often wish that my countrypeople, who almostcompletely lack this, would learn from them . ,

A good pointer to the difference between the characterof a Strasser and that of a Hitler, who is not typical of anyone people but is more unlike the Germans than almostany other race I know, is given by Dr. Hermann Rausch-ning, once an intimate of Hitler, in his book HitlerSpeaks, in reference to Gregor Strasser, Otto's brother :`In Danzig and in most of Northern Germany,

Gregor Strasser had always been more esteemed thanHitler himself. Hitler's nature was incomprehensible tothe North German . The big, broad Strasser, on theother hand, a hearty eater and a hearty drinker too,slightly self-indulgent, practical, clear-headed, quick toact, lacking bombast and pathos, .with a sound peasantjudgment : this was a man we could all understand . I had

' Lady Oxford, writing in the Daily Sketch about the time war broke out,gave the perfect example of the British sense of humour and of the differencebetween these fortunate people, the British, who possess it, and those otherswho have it not .

She found herself one day - she wrote - seated next to Joachim von Ribben-trop at a luncheon table and said to him inevitably - deary, deary me the horrorof this inevitability -'The fault I have to find with the German race is that theyhave never had a sense of humour' . Neither Goethe nor Wagner, sheadded, had possessed one; the only great German writer who was a famoushumorist was the Jew Heine. Herr von Ribbentrop replied that Herr Hitlerand himself had often rolled on the floor in uncontrollable laughter . `Had henot said this seriously',, remarked Lady Oxford, 'I would have suspected thathe was pulling my leg . I said; "And do you really think that this shows asense of humour? I can only say that if any of my children had done it I wouldhave sent them to bed".'

26

OTTO STRASSER AS A NON-COMMISSIONEDOFFICER, 1 9 1 5

SKETCH FOR A PORTRAITbeen present at the last meeting of leaders before ourseizure of power, in Weimar, in the autumn of 1932 .Gregor Strasser gave the meeting its character . Hitlerwas lost in a sea of despondency and accusations on thetop of the Obersalzberg. The party's position wasdesperate . Strasser was calm, and with assurance andquiet confidence, succeeded in quenching the feelingthat the party was at its last gasp . It was he who led theparty. To all practical purposes, Hitler had abdicated .'

Here you have, also, a good picture of Otto Strasser, forthe two brothers were much alike. But for intrigues andstiletto-work that outdid the medieval Italian courtsand the gang-wars of Chicago, the Strassers, and notHitler, might have become the leaders of Germany .Germany would then never have known the orgasms ofhysterical, mock-patriotic self-pity and self-applausewhich she knew under Hitler; but she and Europe wouldprobably have been spared war. The time may becoming soon for Otto Strasser to take up his brother'swork.

Otto was a good-looking lad and young man, as thepictures of him in his recruit and officer days will showyou. Now he is in his middle age, nearly bald, but filledwith that unquenchable energy which astonishes allforeigners, and exhausts many, when they deal withGermans. I am no laggard worker ; but after hours andhours of discussion and debate and research and com-paring notes, I often had to cry halt when OttoStrasser seemingly was just getting into his stride . I likeand admire this terrific energy, which also fills O ttoStrasser's greatest adversary and rival, Hermann Goring .

27

NEMESIS?It is some product of the German climate and theGerman way of life .

Consider Otto Strasser now, as he goes with a quickstride through obscure Paris streets. Average height ;rather bulky, rather stocky ; a heavyish, German-lookingovercoat ; a bow-at-the-back, German-looking hat . Youwould hardly notice him, yet he may force himself onyour notice . In the marionette-theatre that is our world,the unseen hand, Destiny, has of late been tugging gentlyat the strings of this figure, testing them to feel if theyare in good condition .

This man alone, among the men who left Germany,fought! The exiles dispersed to a score of countries . Somesubsided quietly into complete oblivion . Others, andparticularly the Jewish exiles, began a deafening war ofwords. None so bold as they - in the press and radio ofParis and London .

But this man took up the fight, a one-man-fight againstHitler. Whatever he is, whether he become powerful ornot, he could with truth and justice write a book of hislabours and call it Mein Kampf- for this was a Kampf.A fight against fog and frost, against police and pass-ports, against secret pursuers and perjured friends,against gunmen and kidnappers, against poverty andvilification, against poison and bullets .

Whether luck and his own qualities will bring him tothe place he strives for, I do not know . When I first methim, he was reading a book about Napoleon, and in amore intimate moment I said to him, `I hope you are notdeveloping Napoleonitis?' which made him smile . Heoften spoke of the new Germany that he would like to

28

SKETCH FOR A PORTRAITbuild as The Fourth Reich and, again, I wondered ; agood new name is better than a revised edition of a dis-credited old one . And once he told me that his whole,carefully-thought-out and detailed plan for the structureof that new Reich came to him suddenly and vision-like,and, as we are nearly dying of a surfeit of Hitler's visions,I felt dubious .

But the future is his, to make or miss . His past storyis so full of effort and courage that it commands respectand deserves its record. If he reaches his mark, it will passinto history, form the stuff of a hundred biographies . Ifhe fails, it is nevertheless a thundering good story .

CHAPTER 3

THE STARTING GUN

OTTO STRASSER'S life really began, like those of most maleEuropeans born around the turn of the century, with theoutbreak of war in 1 9 1 4 . Since its adjournment, in 19 18,he has had, as the little boy said, two minutes peace eachyear. He was carried by it into the vortex of thoseturbulent years which still hold us captive .

The aspect, to-day, of the quiet family circle in whichhe grew up is typical of the lot of that generation. Hiseldest brother, Gregor, is dead, killed by the man hemade, Hitler. His second brother, Paul, is a Benedictinemonk, until lately in Belgium ; life in Germany was madeimpossible for him and he was fortunate to escape un-scathed. Paul's experience is worth recording. AfterHitler's advent to power, he took a party of youngGermans on a pilgrimage to Rome, was attacked in thepress for this, and on his return arrested at the frontier .Being released, he gave his captors no second chance,but went to Austria, and from there, a little beforeHitler's invasion, to Belgium .

Otto himself is an exile, outlaw, hunted these manyyears from land to land . His youngest brother, born tenyears after himself, a lawyer by profession, is an infantrysubaltern in Hitler's army. His brother-in-law, thehusband of his younger and only sister, is a colonel in thatarmy. Gregor, Paul and Otto all served as officers in the1 914- 18 war .

50

THE STRASSER FAMILYOtto on the right, Paul on the left . Gregor is not shown .

THE STARTING GUNOtto Strasser was born on September i oth, 1897, at

Windsheim in Bavaria ; nine years earlier, Adolf Hitlerwas born not far away, at Braunau, just across theAustrian frontier . Yet a world of difference separatedthese two men . To understand a man, you need to knowhis roots . No man can trace Hitler's roots. The roots ofOtto Strasser were three : a deep German patriotism, aninherited religious feeling, and strong Socialist convic-tions, partly inherited .These three things made the grown man . Patriotism

was fostered by the country of his birth, that loveliest andnoblest countryside in all Germany, the Franconianprovinces of Bavaria . Here one fine town neighboursanother. Rothenburg, the finest surviving example of amedieval town, with its walls and towers, lay a few milesaway; his mother came from Dinkelsbizhl, which inbeauty vies with Rothenburg, and grew up there in thefamous wooden Deutsches Haus, which tourists from allthe world come to see, for her father had an inn in thatancestral home of a Bavarian noble family . Otto Strasser'sgrandfather was another great link with the life ofBavaria, where beer is a second religion, and marvellousbeer it is too, for he was a well-to-do peasant and owneda brewery. A fine countryside, this, where Otto Strassergrew up ; the foreigner may seek his life long, and failto account for the contrast between these noble cities,this thriving and well-farmed land, and the things thatthe State, Germany, does .

The people of these parts are devout Catholics, and theStrassers belonged to them in this as in all else . Heregrew the root of his religious feeling .

31

NEMESIS?The third of Otto Strasser's roots, the political root,

came in a curious way .Political thought, like the fruits of nature, flourishes in

Franconia, which has supplied more famous Germanpoliticians than any other German land, among themStein, Metternich, Baron von Dahlberg, Franz vonSickingen, Ulrich von Hutten and Florian Geyer . OttoStrasser's father was, outwardly, the model of a quiet,diligent, middle-rank civil servant in the judicial service .But in his heart he was a revolutionary Socialist - on aChristian, not a Marxist basis .

His mind, behind his sober, workaday outer man, wasdiscontented with the things his eye saw, in a world ofcourts and pomp, and he wrote, and published anonym-ously, as a civil servant must if he wishes to print histhoughts, a book called Der Neue Weg (The New Way)which set forth his political ideas for A New Germany .Nearly all Germans, at that time and for long after, werethinking about that New Germany ; not much later,young Adolf' Hitler was to start thinking about it, too .The book was published under the pseudonym of PaulWeger - a half-pun on its author's name, PeterStrasser .

The political itch left him no rest, and he afterwardswrote a second book, but his wife caught him at it . Shewas a typical official's wife, with the passion of the femaledefending her young for the safe, prosaic existence,with a pension at the end of it, which her husband couldlook forward - to, as a government servant, if he kept hismouth shut and his views to himself. The sounds ofloud scolding might have been heard in the home of the

32

THE STARTING GUNStrassers at this time, and the end was that PeterStrasser, a man of peace, gave up his project and lockedhis manuscript away .

But here was the political germ, which, for all thegood Hausfrau's antagonism, presently reappeared in theblood of his sons. Exactly the same dispute repeateditself in the life of Otto Strasser at a later date and led tohis divorce from his first wife (his present marriage is histhird.) Otto Strasser, unlike his father, emerged victorin this household strife, and parted company from hiswife rather than abandon his political convictions . Hewas the revolutionary Socialist resolute ; his father, therevolutionary Socialist frustrated . For these reasonsPeter Strasser always took Otto Strasser's part in his laterdisputes .

I have recorded these things because they explain theman, Otto Strasser, of to-day : a South German home-land, a religious upbringing, an inherited politicalinterest .

The rest, until the starting gun sounded, is almostirrelevant, but not quite . He left school in 1913 and,because his father could not afford to pay more fees thanthose he was already paying for Gregor at the universityand Paul at a grammar school, Otto became an appren-tice in a textile factory .

`A terrible year', he says, `six months in the countinghouse, six months in the workshops.' In the first helearned only to fill the inkpots (typewriters had not thenreached the factory), copy the letters, fetch their food forthe clerks and workmen at i o o'clock, and stick on stamps .And in the second six months, in the factory itself, he

33

NEMESIS?learned to pack things up. `I can make a wonderfulparcel to-day and have never forgotten this.' In Septem-ber 1914 he was to have resumed his studies, for whichthe fees were now available -but the starting-gunsounded.

Otto Strasser was a 6 years and i o months old. OnAugust 2nd, 194, he reported himself as a volunteer inAugsburg ; Hitler reported on the same day, in Munich .Strasser wanted to be a light cavalryman - those longovercoats, those heavy sabres, those clanking spurs! -but after being locked in a riding school with 300 othervolunteers for three days, and forgotten, he broke outand was accepted by the Fourth Artillery Regiment, onsix weeks probation, because he was weakly! The sixweeks lengthened into five years .

He was a boy of sixteen . This was the most formativeperiod of his life . Though the war only steeled his love ofGermany, and his feeling for the German army, he thinksto-day with horror of his experiences as a recruit andyoung soldier in Imperial Germany. His description ofthem deepens the eternal perplexity of the foreigner atthe duality of the German character, at the Jekyll-and-Hyde nature of a people in which the highest militaryand civic qualities are seen side by side with a bestialbrutality .

Strasser was passionately a soldier at-heart, but regardsthe non-commissioned-officers of that day as the mostrepulsive beings he has known . Among the 300 men inhis unit were some 18o students, and the non-commiss-ioned-officers vented their especial spleen on these inways which left him with an ineradicable loathing of a

34

OTTO STRASSER AS A VOLUNTEER IN A LIGHT CAVALRYREGIMENT, 1 91 4

THE STARTING GUNclass of man now best represented among the senior BrownArmy commanders .

Let Strasser describe some of these scenes for himself.`One Saturday afternoon in October 1 94, when wewere all due for leave in the town, had our best uniformson and the girls waiting outside, an enormously corpulentsergeant-major had us all on parade and shouted, "Thosewho speak English or French, parade on the right ; thosewho play the piano, on the left" . At that time Turkey hadjust entered the war and in our innocence we thoughtthat men who could understand the orders, given inFrench or English, of Turkish officers might be wantedfor service with the Orient Army, so most of us rushed tovolunteer. Then the sergeant-major, inflating his paunchand regarding us malevolently, said, "So, and now thepiano-players can get to work scrubbing the floors, andthe conceited intellectuals on the right may spend theafternoon cleaning the closets . The others can go out .Dismiss!" From that day, I never again paraded myintellectual attainments in the army . I went off to theclosets, found them stopped-up and in a disgustingcondition, and asked the shoemaker-corporal to give mea long piece of strong wire with a hook at the end to helpme in cleaning them. While I was doing this, a corporalcame up behind me, and said : "What are you doing?"I reported most obediently, "I am cleaning the closets,according to orders" . "You conceited intellectual swine,get down on your knees and do it with your hands, like asoldier." I was compelled to lie down full length in thisfilth and clean it with my bare hands . Since that day Ihave a hatred of these people which nothing can kill .

35

NEMESIS?They are the SS men of to-day. The SS spirit was bornthere .'

(The `SS man' of whom Strasser speaks is the black-uniformed member of the Schutzsta.ffel, formerly the elitecorps of the Brown Army, later used for concentrationcamp duty, beatings-up, killings, and espionage on the .home-front in general .)

`Stables' was sounded at four o'clock in the morning,and the straw had then to be cleaned . Strasser hit on theidea of taking a pitchfork and lifting the straw with it,so that the droppings fell through and the clean strawremained . Again came the corporal, with his abuse ofthe `damned intellectuals', and ordered this work, too,to be done with the hands. One such man compelled ayoung recruit to drink from a spittoon ; the lad never gotover this, and shot himself.

These things are almost beyond belief, but theyhappened in Germany, and here you have them fromthe lips of a German patriot . I knew of them, and manyother foreigners knew of them, and saw that this spirit,this scum, would come to the top if Hitler's NationalSocialism prevailed. It did ; and although I do notbelieve that such things occur in the German Armyto-day, they have reappeared, as Otto Strasser says withperfect truth, in another form - the bestialities of the .SS and their concentration camps . (I wrote almostexactly the same thing in Insanity Fair.)

Strasser's worst experience was at the hands of asergeant who particularly hated him, apparently on thesame ground, that he was an `intellectual' .

At the front, in a battery position, in April 19 1 5,36

THE STARTING GUNthis man compelled Strasser to clean his top-boots atfour o'clock every morning, first excreting in them sothat he should not himself have to go out in the cold .Later, in a reserve position, he put Strasser, though hewas a bombardier and had nothing to do with the horses,to cleaning horses so lice-ridden that some of them hadto be destroyed. The man on this duty became coveredwith lice at the first stroke of the brush, with the resultthat his comrades would not allow him in the dugoutand he had to sleep in the open . An officer foundStrasser thus, trying to sleep, heard the story, gaveorders that he should never be put to this duty again, andgave the sergeant fourteen days field punishment . Whenhe came out, he encountered Strasser and advanced onhim, roaring, in the untranslatable and unprintablejargon of the parade-ground terror of those days, `I'llsmear your brains on the wall for this' .

Strasser drew his revolver and was prepared to shoot,whereon the sergeant shouted, `Now I've got you, you

', and had him court martialled . But Strasser wasacquitted and the sergeant again punished .This story had a sequel . In January 1918 Strasser

was a battery-commander at the front and received adraft, including this man . He told him, quietly, that theold incident was forgotten, but that if he ever caughthim mishandling a bombardier he would have himdegraded. The battery sergeant-major was given instruc-tions particularly to watch this man, who later wascaught at the same trick . He came before a courtmartial, was degraded, and received five years penalservitude .

37

NEMESIS?

Otto Strasser was seventeen years old when thesethings happened. They are important, in a man whomay come to the forefront of affairs-because theyexplain and give truth to the words he utters to-day :`Since that time I have an undying hatred of militarism,

as opposed to the calling of a soldier, which is something

quite different.' They also explain his hatred of Hitler-ism, which for him means Germany in the grip of themen who treated him thus in 1914 .

In October 1914, fearing that he would not reach thefront before the war ended, he volunteered, though atrained artilleryman by now, for transfer to the infantry .At that time the Sixth Bavarian Reserve Infantry Divis-ion consisted of four regiments, the 16th, 17th, loth and21st. Adolf Hitler was serving in the 16th, as a head-quarters orderly, behind the front . Strasser was posted tothe loth, and, just seventeen years old, went into thetrenches in Flanders, with British troops, at first the Sikhs,against him, at Wytschaete and Warneton.More than half the volunteers were students, of

Strasser's age or thereabouts . They went into battle likethe picture-book heroes, singing Deutschland fiber Alles,and at Warneton Strasser's company lost seven-tenths ofits men. `The English fire,' he says, `was deadly .'There he lay until March 1915 . Then his battalion

was rushed off towards the Russian front, in nightmarches so cold and exhausting that the coffee in thewater-bottles froze and the men collapsed by the road-side, and the threats of officers, with brandished swordsand revolvers, could not move them. They slept likethe dead for twenty-four hours in a disused factory -

38

THE STARTING GUNaid were rushed back to hold the great British attack atNeuve Chapelle .

In March 1915 Strasser was re-transferred to theartillery, and, after the court martial, sent up to Armen-ti res, where he won the Iron Cross, Second Class,during a British attack in the late summer. By September19 15 he was sergeant; then in May i g 16 he was seriouslywounded by a shell splinter ; on Christmas Eve 1916, ashe was preparing to celebrate the festival, he was orderedby telegram to join a newly-formed section, the Third,of the First Bavarian Reserve Artillery Regiment. AtVerdun, he was in charge of his battery's telephones ; byMay r g 17 he was a warrant officer ; and in October 19 1 7,artillery lieutenant .Hard fighting, on that muddy Western Front, where

the great armies lay locked in each other's grip . Nowbegan his service as a German officer, and to-day hishatred for the non-commissioned-officers of that time isequalled by his admiration for the German Officers'Corps. Here, he found in many things a truer democracyand a finer spirit. Here, he found the calling of a soldier .His battery commander was Count von Hertling, a

nephew of the German Chancellor of the same nameabout that time . Otto Strasser gives the followingexample of the spirit he admires :

`No candidate was admitted to the Officers' Corps,that is, to the rank of lieutenant, without the unanimousagreement of all officers in the unit . It was thus like aclub, and the rule was most jealously held . Without sucha unanimous proposal from the Officers' Corps, the Kingof Bavaria himself' (Strasser served throughout in the

39

NEMESIS?Bavarian Army) `could not appoint an officer . The thenBavarian War Minister was much annoyed that his son,the ensign Count X, was not made an officer . Thecolonel of the regiment asked Count von Hertling, thebattery commander, why he would not propose him,and Hertling answered "He is incapable, cowardly, of nouse to us" . A few weeks later came an urgent telegramfrom the Bavarian War Minister asking why Count Xhad not been nominated, as His Majesty wished to makehim an officer at Christmas . Count von Hertling oncemore declined to nominate him . Thereupon the colonelcalled a meeting of all officers in the regiment ; he wishedto have Count Hertling voted down . The coloneladdressed his officers and put his case before them,saying, "After all, gentlemen, this is the son of the WarMinister, and after all, again, we have enough stupidofficers in the army, one more won't make muchdifference, and in addition it is the express wish of HisMajesty, or at any rate papa says so ; it is a great scandalin the court circle at Munich" . Answered Count Herding :"I can certainly understand that Herr Papa is troubledabout this, but the lives of the soldiers whom Count Xwould have under him as an officer are more importantthan the dissatisfaction in court circles in Munich ."A vote was then taken of all the officers present, and witha large majority Count Herding's attitude was endorsedand that of the colonel rejected . His Majesty the King ofBavaria and his War Minister had no choice but to takethe young Count X away and transfer him to a moredocile regiment - but the First Bavarian ArtilleryRegiment was the best in the State, and ranked with the

40

THE STARTING GUNGuards. Count X eventually obtained his lieutenancy insome remote and unsought-after regiment with a verylow number - the 46th, or something of that sort .'That is another illuminating glimpse of a country,

Germany, and of a German, Otto Strasser . In thepolitical events that followed the war, the Strassersalways stood well with the army, and had friends in itshighest ranks . Indeed, after Hitler came to power theArmy would have liked to unseat Hitler and put GregorStrasser in his place ; that was one reason for the greatclean-up of June 3oth, 1934, and for the killing ofGregor Strasser . These threads have never been entirelycut, and may prove important yet .

Now came the last great convulsion of the 1914-18war, the last great German victory in that war of greatGerman victories but not of victory. Tsarist Russia hadcollapsed, and Russia was in the throes of the BolshevistRevolution, the plague-germs of which had been sentthere, in the persons of Lenin and his alien throng, byGermany. The German rear was free ; all the Germanweight could be thrown against the West, before themass of American troops arrived . Ludendorff made hislast great throw for victory . The British Fifth Armytook the full shock of the German onslaught. Once more,the German tide set in strongly, flowing towards Paris,that strand so often lapped but never quite reached .

On that famous day, March 21st, 1918, Otto Strasserwas in the front line of the attack, south of Saint Quentin .He was artillery liaison officer, with the duty of main-taining communication between the advancing infantryand the guns behind them, and on that day there was first

4I

NEMESIS?tried a new variation of the method of throwing theinfantry forward immediately behind a progressivelyadvancing curtain of fire .Almost without loss, and helped by fog, the German

troops in Strasser's sector, the spearhead of the attack,took the first and second British lines, and found them-selves four hundred yards from a British battery . Theinfantry commander declined to advance farther, andStrasser called for volunteers . Seventeen men responded,and with them he took the battery, shooting the Britishbattery commander in the hip with his revolver anddemanding to know from him, as he lay, the position ofthe next battery . `I won't tell you,' said this officer .`So I had him bandaged,' says Strasser, `but I made, hisown men carry him off. And then I turned one of theBritish guns round and silenced a machine-gun nestwith it .'

For this and other exploits in those fateful days,including the capture of a British brigade staff, Strasser,who in the meantime had received the Iron Cross, FirstClass, and the Bavarian Distinguished Service Order,was recommended twice for the Bavarian Max JosefOrder. This was the rarest German decoration forvalour, more highly coveted even than the Prussian Pourle Merite which Goring wears, and carried the predicateof nobility with it . Otto Strasser would have been ableto call himself Ritter Otto von Strasser, as John Brownmay become Sir John Brown, K.C.B . But the Germancollapse and the disappearance of the Bavarian monarchyended his hopes of receiving the award .

Those were great days for Otto Strasser . He knew the42

THE STARTING GUNexhilaration of a big advance, victory seemed to liebehind each new objective, hope was high in him and hismen. He has the greatest respect for the British Army,against which he did most of his fighting, and for Britainas a foe; `When the British once start,' he then wrote,`they don't let go,' and I think he is right in this : thebulldog simile has actually some truth . The commanderof the GrafSpee said the same thing twenty-one years later .

But in that spring, as he pushed forward with his men,the war really seemed to be going well for Germany . Herarmies held nearly all Europe ; they had crushed Russia ;now they were storming Paris-ward again .

That was a spring to inspire a young officer . Luden-dorff'would win the game yet! What a general, thoughtStrasser and his comrades . (To-day, Strasser says he isalmost horrified to see how Hitler is repeating allLudendorff's mistakes. Ludendorff conquered onecountry, vanquished one foe, won one victory afteranother - so many victories, but not victory . Hitler isdoing the same, says Strasser. He has swallowed twocountries ; he may yet swallow half a dozen more ; he maygo from victory to victory ; but never to Victory .) Lookingback on those days, Otto Strasser inclines to think thatLudendorff made a mistake, after the collapse of Russia,in launching the entire remaining strength of Germanyagainst the French and British on the Western Front .Better, he thinks, if Ludendorff had used a part of it tooverrun Italy ; that victory could have been had fairlycheaply and the impression it would have made wouldhave put Germany in a better position to bargain for afavourable peace .

43

NEMESIS?As to that, none can say, now. But as the summer

came, the German advance slowed down, the Americanspoured into France in ever greater numbers, andOtto Strasser's heart began to sink . By June 1918 thepromises of the German Admiralty to prevent the trans-port of American troops to France through the use ofthe submarine, had been proved vain . Half a millionAmericans were already there, and each month thatsucceeded would bring a quarter of a million more .

`And what soldiers!' says Otto Strasser . `I shall neverforget the impression that my first encounter with theAmericans made on me, on August 25th, 1918 . 1 wasdefending with my battery and a few infantrymen andmachine-gunners a canal-crossing near Soissons. We hadbeen falling back for days before an urgent and superiorenemy. We were without proper supplies of munitionsor food, we could not get our wounded and sick away .We had no mail, no trustworthy communication withheadquarters, or with our flanks. We dug ourselves inat this important bridge to hold up the advancing enemy-black French Colonial troops -as long as we couldand cover the retreat of the main body . Some hourspassed and, to our surprise, we saw no sign of the enemy .With an orderly, I rode carefully across the bridge andinto no-man's land, which was a mile broad at that point .

`Suddenly I saw in front of me, about half a mileaway, turning a tree-hidden corner in the road, endlessmarching columns of cheerful, singing troops in fours,brand-new equipment from their boots to their steelhelmets. They marched and sang as if in the midst ofpeace, splendid young fellows . Four years earlier, in the

44

THE STARTING GUNsummer of t g 14, we had marched off to war looking likethat!

`For the first time, as I watched them, fear rose inme -fear that we should lose the war. What did itavail us that our shells and machine-gun fire moweddown these incautious lads in swathes, just as we weremown down by the British in Flanders in 1914? Thishuman torrent was so mighty, so relentless, that we werebound to drown in it .

`And' -adds Otto Strasser, and this is important -`no German soldier who had that experience, who withhis own eyes saw the contrast between the starved,ragged and exhausted figures of our diminishing army,and the well-nourished, splendidly-equipped, well-trained and well-rested lads of the innumerable Americanarmies, can ever believe in the stupid and venomousfairytale of the "Stab-in-the-back" .'

(I say this is important, because Hitler succeeded,through the irresolution and passivity with which theouter world accepted his successive armed coups, inmaking the Germans ultimately believe that they hadnever been beaten in the field, but had only lost the warthrough the 'Stab-in-the-back' of strikers and mutineersat home .)

Thus, hard on the heels of the triumphant spring andthe summer of doubt, came the autumn of disillusion-ment and despair . This was the first of the really bitterperiods in Otto Strasser's life .

Here you have the picture, in the words of a man who,unlike Hitler, was in the forefront of the fighting,advance or retreat :

45

NEMESIS?`Wherever the Allies attacked, our High Command

defended every scrap of trench at enormous cost in life,then withdrew a mile or two to ease the pressure, andmade a new stand . The German guns were worn out,and the supply of new ones could not keep pace with theneed . The German artillery lost irreplaceable material .The German battalions mustered less than 50o men,after two or three days fighting they were down to 300and 200, to the strength of companies . But these menwere burnt-out slack . Whole divisions were no strongerthan, in 1914, had been a single regiment, sometimes evenweaker than that. Reinforcements were made up of half-grown lads and fifty-year-olds, fathers, grandfathers,sick, half-invalided men . The uniforms were made ofsubstitute materials, the boots were of odd pieces ofleather held together by cobbler's thread, leather equip-ment gave way to hempen makeshifts . The food, alreadybad, diminished even in quantity .'Germany was beaten . `I realized by then that there

was no hope left,' says Otto Strasser . `The spirit was oneof desperation. Murmurs of mutiny were in the air .The troops were inferior. The game was up .'

Retreat from glory! Strasser fought rearguard actions .His battery was the only one of the division which wasnot captured ; he saved his own guns and three Prussianguns as well. In September he was so ill with sciaticathat he could neither walk nor ride, and had to becarried. An inglorious end to that jubilantly undertakenadventure. A sick man on a stretcher returned to achaotic Germany where a youngster burning withpatriotism had left a prosperous and well-found land .

46

THE STARTING GUNAs the German revolution approached, Otto Strasserlay in hospital in Munich; in another hospital, at theopposite end of Germany, in Pasewalk, was Adolf Hitler .

On November 6th, 1918, Strasser, a veteran of twenty-one, was allowed out of hospital, on crutches, for thefirst time . He used this opportunity to pay a quick visitto his parents, now at Deggerndorf. On November7th he had to return . As he arrived in Munich he heardthe roar of a mob . Hundreds of rioters thronged thestation and stormed the train, arresting all officers saveStrasser, because he was crippled . But they made totear off the cockade from his cap and his officer'sshoulder-straps .He drew his revolver-this man has been drawing

his revolver now for twenty years or more . A soldier'came towards him, told him good-humouredly not tobe silly, took the revolver away, and told the crowd, `Iknow him, he was my officer in the war. He's all right,he's one of the best. Leave him alone' .

Strasser had never seen him before. He was aSoldatenrat, a member of the revolutionary Soldiers',Sailors' and Workmen's Councils, and wore the redarmband. He accompanied Strasser to his hotel, andbrought him civilian clothes there. Strasser decided tostay in Munich .

This was a very different homecoming from the onethe German soldiers had pictured to themselves-thetraditional, triumphal homecoming of flower-tossingmaidens, cheering crowds, bands, bugles and beer . Therace that began with the starting-gun seemed to havefinished, but actually it was just getting under way .

47

CHAPTER 4

BELATED HOMECOMING

OTTO STRASSER, on two crutches, with chaos aroundhim, took stock of his life and surveyed the future . First,he decided to resume those studies interrupted, in 1913,by lack of funds, and, in 1914, by the starting-gun .Now, he was equally short of time and of money .Curtailed courses, three-years-in-one, were available forthe men whose education had been stopped by the war,but even this was too long for him . He could only counton his officer's pay as long as he was sick, and resolved tocomplete that one-year course, somehow, by hook or bycrook, in six months .

But first, he had to nurse his health, and to that endhe went to a modest Bavarian spa, Bad Eibling, andfound there, as well as health, politics . Here came about,in a strange way, his first small appearance on a politicalstage .

Before I describe it, I want again to trace the growthof political thought in this man . In the beginning, itwas inherited, this longing for a just social order thatburns in so many Germans, from his father, that out-wardly calm, inwardly fiery Bavarian state official .

Then, in the war,sas an officer, he had to give `patrioticinstruction' to his men. This was ordered by GeneralLudendorff, who already scented disaster, at the end of1917 and was intended to `improve the spirit of the

48

BELATED HOMECOMINGtroops' . In dugouts and billets, the men gathered roundtheir officers, who were supposed to dispel their doubtsabout the war and its results and the things that Germanyostensibly was fighting for, and to convince them that allquestions, all doubts, all scruples, found their ultimateanswer in the words `Kaiser', `Fatherland', `Patriotism',and the like .

Otto Strasser was himself, in his heart, a Socialist -a Socialist of a special kind, as I shall presently explain -and the questions that some of his men put to him,though he turned them aside or stalled them off withpatriotic eyewash, rankled and festered in his mind .Some of them, indeed, would put all the professors inthe world to rout in their succinctness, in their simpleexpression of an unanswerable thought, and even intheir language. For instance, this retort, when OttoStrasser spoke of The Fatherland

'Sehen S', Herr Leutnant, i' bin a Taglohner ; i' habka' Land ; mei' Vater hat ka' Land; also, was haast furmich Vaterland?'

The beauty of this unfortunately is a little lost intranslation, but it means : `Look, Herr Leutnant, I am aday-labourer ; I own no land ; my father owns no land ;so what, for me, is Fatherland?'

And this question, put by a Bavarian private who incivilian life was a textile worker in Augsburg : 'HerrLeutnant, what is Germany to me? I earn my wage,and it is never more, though it can be less . I can earn itanywhere I go in the world . What difference does itmake to me if the English capitalist, or the Italiancapitalist, or the French capitalist, or the German

49

NEMESIS?capitalist pays me my wages. When I am old andused-up they will chuck me out anyway . So what isGermany to me?'Picture Otto Strasser, in some candle-lit barn, or

dugout parrying these questions . This life, theseexperiences, added to his inheritance, were forming theman who was developing into an anti-internationalSocialist, or, to use the term which Hitler afterwardsmisused, a National Socialist.

This, in the simplest possible analysis, is the deep-lying difference in thought which for years preventedOtto Strasser from joining Hitler, which later led him tobreak away from Hitler, and is responsible for hissubsequent long and undaunted struggle against Hitler- the difference between National Socialism and NationalSocialism.For Otto Strasser, Socialism was always the noun,

National merely the adjective, and he rightly foresawdisaster in the blurring of that fact . In a long altercationbetween him and Hitler, once, the issue was joined onthis point, and Hitler, the wordy, accused Strasser ofhumbugging with words . But Strasser answered, againrightly, that this was no question of juggling with words,but of a fact and a truth, and of the things they were orwere not working for. As stupid, he argued, to deny thata bath-chair was in fact a chair, or a lieutenant-colonela colonel ; by Hitler's argument, a field-marshal wouldhave been a field. Socialism on a patriotic basis, Strasserwanted ; not militarism with the word Socialist tackedon to it to dupe the masses . And that is exactly the issue,to-day as then .

50

BELATED HOMECOMINGIn the officers' mess, Strasser was wont to discuss these

encounters with his men, and to argue that the govern-ing classes in Germany were wrong not to put themselvesat the head of the Socialist masses, not to guide, insteadof trying to repress, the longing for a just social orderwhich was fermenting in the German soul . `We officers,and not the Jews, should lead the workers,' he argued .This made him politically a little suspect in the Officers'Corps, and he was known as The Red Lieutenant .But back to Bad Eibling, and Otto Strasser's first

appearance in politics . The Republic had been pro-claimed in Bavaria. Strasser, at his spa, had to concealthe fact that he was an officer, for the peat-workers fromthe neighbouring Kolbermoor were violent revolu-tionaries._ The Jewish Communist leader from Munich,Kurt Eisner, came to Bad Eibling for this very reason .

Otto Strasser, now on two sticks, attended the meeting,a large one, held in December 1918. He looked downfrom the gallery, where he was accompanied by half adozen men of his own mind, upon the crowded hall, andlistened to things which `made me almost mad withrage' .

Kurt Eisner, with long hair and beard, looked like thecaricatures of a Ghetto Jew . He was, in fact, by originsa Polish Jew and spoke defective German ; he had notbeen in the war, but had written for the SocialistVorwarts . He was, therefore, `a Socialist'. So was theangry man listening from the gallery . This picture willperhaps show the difference between one Socialist andanother Socialist .

`Kurt Eisner spoke with a fearful Galician accent and5 1

NEMESIS?with typically Jewish gestures . He was as clever in themethods he used with this yokel audience as any tricksterat a fair. "They reproach me with being a Prussian",he said, to odd cries of Jawohl, du Saupreusse ; "If mymother in her ninth month had come to Munich and Ihad been born here I should have been a Bavarian . But- with spreading arms - ware ich ein anderer gewesen?Should I have been a different man?" One or twopeasants scratched their heads at this and nodded ateach other, "Yes, that's right, he's right there" . Then hecontinued : "Secondly, they reproach me with being aJew." (Odd cries of, Jawohl, du Saujude!) "But was notChrist a 'Jew? The man who vilifies us Jews, vilifiesChrist." This completely flummoxed the peasants, whowere devout Catholics, and they shuffled uncomfortablyand looked uncertainly at each other and nodded, as ifthey felt there was a catch in this somewhere, couldn'tfor the life ofthem see where, but had better keep on theright side of the Church anyway .

`Then he started . He shouted that Germany wasguilty of the war, that the officers had swilled andguzzled while the troops were driven into the enemy'sfire. Both his speech and that of a fat cattle-dealer,Gandorfer, who followed him were directed mainlyagainst the officers . "These officers, these Schweinehunde,went whoring and boozing, and you had to die forthem." 'This was too much for the red-faced man in the

gallery, who shouted repeatedly `You liar, you liar', sothat the chairman of the meeting called up, `If you wantto speak, come down and speak afterwards in the debate' .

52

BELATED HOMECOMING`I will', said Strasser, and this was his first publicappearance .

He had never spoken before, he was almost incoherentwith indignation, he was twenty-one years old, he wassick, and he had a hostile audience . `I spoke badly, butit took effect,' says Strasser. `I told them that propor-tionately the casualties among officers had been threetimes as high as those among the men . Not the officersenriched themselves,' I said, `but the war profiteers, likethis fat Gandorfer here . Where were you in the war,Herr Eisner? Where were you in the war, HerrGandorfer? I was at the front ; so were you who sitdown there. Ask these loudmouthed gentlemen herewhere they were, and if they only had sixpence a daypay, like us .'

While he was speaking, his hosts inquired who he was,and suddenly Gandorfer sprang up, pushed him aside,and shouted, `Comrades, now we have unveiled thisfellow - he's an officer!' There was tumult in the hall,the peat-workers, who carry knives in their right boots,surged angrily towards the platform . The men on theplatform seized Strasser, pushed him to the back door,threw him out and locked it .These two men, Otto Strasser and Kurt Eisner, both

called themselves `Socialists' . I stress this point, in orderto show what very different types of men may becovered by this name .

Soon after, Kurt Eisner was shot in Munich by CountArco. Thereupon the Red Republic was proclaimed ;until then, there had been a Left Coalition Governmentof Socialists, Independent Socialists, and Communists .

53

NEMESIS?Levine, a Russian Jew and emissary from Moscow, wasthe moving spirit in the Munich Soviet ; other Jews in itwere Ernst Toiler and Erich Muhsam .

The most famous Bavarian soldier, General von Epp,began to recruit men to oust the Red Government inMunich. He had seen colonial service, and in the warwas, first; Colonel of the Bavarian Guard and latergeneral officer commanding the Bavarian Alpine Corps,elite troops. He had fled to Ohrdruf in Thuringia and,with one Captain Ernst Rohm as his chief-of-staff, formedthe Epp Free Corps, which all patriotic Bavarians triedto join .In Munich, the Red Government, fearing the attack,

arrested hundreds of hostages, chiefly officers, and nowa very sinister thing happened, which deserves a muchgreater place in the history of the Jews in politics thanit has received. Among the hostages were twenty-twomembers of the `Tulle, Society', a small and unimport-ant body which fostered the cult of old German litera-ture, traditions, folklore, legends, and the like. Anti-Semitism was an integral part of its teaching ; so wasanti-Christianity. It was an insignificant group withoutany power or possibility of putting its theories intopractice. It had no single politician among its members,only a few old professors and noblemen .

Of all the hundreds of hostages precisely these twenty-two people, including several women, among themCountess Westarp, were taken out and shot by the alienJewish Government of Munich!

The Epp Free Corps took shape for the expeditionagainst Red Munich. All the figures who later played a

54

BELATED HOMECOMINGbig part in the European drama gathered for this smallerone - save Hitler!

Hitler was in Munich . He was still a soldier. He had,as he tells in Mein Kampf, taken that fearsome anti-Bolshevist oath in hospital at Pasewalk . He was alreadyresolved to save the world from Bolshevism . Yet he didnot spring to save Munich from Bolshevism . He did notmake his way out and join the Epp Free Corps, althoughhe avowedly burned to fight. He was in Munich, andhe was a soldier. But the soldiers in Munich were underthe orders of the Red Government, the Jewish Govern-ment ruled from Moscow. If he was in barracks, hemust have been - a Red!There was much muttering and murmuring among the

National Socialist leaders, much shaking of puzzledheads, in later years, about this, but not the hint of anexplanation of his doings in Munich at that time evercame from Hitler. This is a . complete gap in Mein Kampf.It is one of the darkest things in all his dark history .I would give almost anything I have to know for whomthat man really worked, not only then, but at all timeslater .

Otto Strasser first drew my particular attention to thisremarkable episode in Hitler's life . Although I hadclosely studied these things, I had overlooked it, and I donot think any other writer has noticed its significance ordiscussed it . Indeed, a man who was up to the neck in thepolitical turmoil of those days, as was Otto Strasser, isneeded to put it in its true proportion, and future histor-ians will be indebted to him for this, because it is one ofthe most important of the things we know, and they are

55

NEMESIS?too few, about the man Hitler . Later, when we knowmore of him, and the double or triple game he alwaysplayed is clearer to see, it may prove to be the missingpiece in the jigsaw puzzle .

It is worth explaining more fully, for this reason . TheRed regime in Munich lasted from November 1918 untilMay i st, i g i g . Hitler, according to his own account inMein Kampf, was filled with the most violent hatred ofthe Jewish-Communist revolution in Germany from themoment it broke out, in the first days of November .In the last days of November, cured and dischargedfrom hospital, he reported to his regimental depot - inthat very Munich where the Reds were most powerful .

His own battalion was under the orders of the revolu-tionary `Soldiers' Council' . This so disgusted him, hesays, that by some means he contrived to be sent to a campat Traunstein, a few miles away . He says that hereturned to Munich `in March' . The Reds were drivenout by von Epp and the Prussian troops at the end ofApril. For about two months, therefore, Hitler, a servingsoldier, was in Munich when the Red regime was at itsheight, under the rule of a Russian Jew sent fromMoscow, when the hostages were being shot .Good Bavarians who were there at the same time

contrived, by hook or by crook, to get out of Munich andmake their way to von Epp, returning with him to drivethe Reds out. Otto Strasser did this, at the risk of hislife and after surmounting many difficulties .

Hitler, who devotes so many pages in his book towindy abuse of the Reds in Moscow and of InternationalBolshevism in general, stayed quietly in Munich. He

56

BELATED HOMECOMINGsays no word of his life in Munich during those twomonths. He gives no description of the horrors he saw -he, who later rails for pages at a time about the wholesalemassacres in Moscow - or of conditions in Munich atall.

But, and this is the vital point, he was a soldier, andsoldiers who stayed in Munich were under the orders ofthat Red Government ; if they didn't like it, they desertedby night to von Epp, in Thuringia, and Hitler did not dothat. He was then - a Red! He probably wore the redarm-band. Presumably, with the rest of the Munichgarrison, he took part in the fighting against von Epp'stroops .What other leader of such a party as the National

Socialist Party would in a book pass over in silence sucha period as this? All Hitler has to say about it is the vagueand unintelligible remark that he was `nearly arrested'three days before the Reds were driven out . From that hecalmly passes on to a sentence beginning : `A few daysafter the liberation of Munich I was . . .' Nothing abouthis reasons for staying in Munich, nothing about thehorrors of a Red regime which he actually knew, nothingabout the severe fighting that preceded the liberation ofMunich, nothing about the triumphal entry of von Epp'stroops.

Every other notable National Socialist leader or StormTroop commander, in those days, fought with one orother of the Free Corps somewhere in Germany ; this wasthe very thing that gave them a claim to subsequentadvancement in the Party . But the Fi hrer himself, thearch anti-Red - was in Munich. He, who was always

57

NEMESIS?filled with a religious horror and hatred of the Bolshevists,retained from these months spent under their rule in acity that he regarded as his adopted birthplace no singlememory worth putting on paper.

I believe that future historians will need to start theirresearches into his life in Munich, in the period betweenMarch and May 19 19, and unless all the tracks havefaded they will discover some strange things . OttoStrasser says that for many years afterwards - until theadvent to power placed Hitler on a pedestal elevatedabove all such doubts, which would have cost the audibledoubter his life - the National Socialist leaders, whenthey were talking together of this and that, alwaysreturned to the question `What was Adolf doing inMunich in March and April i g i g?' and the answer wasalways a perplexed shrug of the shoulders or shake of thehead.

But all the other men concerned in these events actedas they preached . Von Epp and Rohm formed theirFree Corps. Gregor Strasser, back from the war, afterserious wounds, had already formed a patriotic FreeCorps (the Verband Nationalgesinnter Soldaten Niederbayerns)at Landshut .This immensely popular man, the living embodiment

of the German tragedy, who had a rare gift for talking tohis men on equal terms, soon had together a troop of2000 infantrymen, three field batteries, and a i 5cm .howitzer battery, with full war equipment and munitions!Such things were possible in that chaotic Germany .

Gregor Strasser was for a time lord of Lower Bavaria,but as he was an apothecary by day, and could only

58

BELATED HOMECOMINGbecome a Free Corps leader by night, he took a helper,a young man called Heinrich Himmler. Himmler hadnot been in the war ; he was too young . He reached therank of ensign at home, but never became an officer,and suffered ever afterwards from a sense of militaryinferiority for this reason, which he strove to compensatethrough exaggeratedly coarse and loud militaristbehaviour. He had vaguely studied agriculture ; but hisfirst profession was that of being adjutant to GregorStrasser. By day, when Gregor Strasser was busy in hischemist's shop, Himmler was a great man .Gregor Strasser and his miniature army immediately

joined von Epp. (Himmler, for some reason, did not .)Otto Strasser abandoned the studies he had just taken upin Munich and with great difficulty contrived to smugglehimself out of Red Munich and join von Epp at Ohrdruf .As von Epp had too many officers, Otto Strasser servedas bombardier with a mechanized battery .The march on Munich began - the Epp Free Corps

and a regular Prussian division . In Munich, the RussianJew Levine ruled . In two days Munich was captured,after fierce fighting . Levine was court martialled andshot. Otto Strasser is entitled to wear on his left armthe golden lion of the Epp Free Corps .

This episode is also important, for students of con-temporary history who seek to know what sort of aSocialist Otto Strasser is . Hitler, the anti-internationalist,the anti-Marxist, the anti-Bolshevist, the anti Jew, . theanti-Socialist, was nowhere to be found in those days .Otto Strasser, who is not only a Socialist but an anti-militarist, was dabei, he was there, he fought to turn the

59

NEMESIS?Reds out. If you think about these things long enough,and put them in their proper places, and study manyother things that Hitler has done, many of your ideaswill change .On May Day i g i g came the triumphal entry into

Munich. The Bavarian soldiers had dreamed for fouryears of such a triumphal homecoming after the war, butinstead of that they saw a revolutionary, alien-led mobwhich spat at every soldier who did not wear -a red arm-band and tore off the officers' shoulder-straps .

But on this day, with summer in the air, Munich was amass of flowers and cheering people. The incomingtroops did, after all, get posies for the muzzles of theirrifles and for their helmets . Otto Strasser and hiscomrades recaptured a broken dream ; a little late, thedream came true .

CHAPTER 5

WAY OF A SOCIALIST

Now came that frenzied, tempestuous, post-war periodin Germany, when middle-aged men found their livesin ruins about them, when young men back from thearmy sought to find a way through chaos to an orderedexistence, when lads leaving school looked confusedly,like shepherdless sheep, into a scheme of things that hadbeen shattered to bits and offered no clear way to anassured future .All barriers had been broken down, but so had all

conventions and all standards . The regimentation of themasses, which had been far too strict, gave way to alicence that was far too libertine . Youth was the prey ofthe free foxes in the liberated hen-roost . Chastity was thebutt of a literature and a stage that, in the land of Goetheand the Meistersingers, had come predominantly underthe influence of alien cheapjacks and exploiters mas-querading as great writers and inspired impresarios .

`Glamour' then had its home in Berlin; its victims,girls and lads in their early teens, were openly boughtand sold in the temples of sexual perversion whichflourished beneath blazing electric signs in the cities .The word `currency' became a farce, but while thesavings of hard-working people vanished overnight, themanipulators, the vultures of the inflation, grew fat ; theother day in London I bought for thirty shillings a

6i

NEMESIS?collection of German banknotes issued in those days, thenominal value of which represented more billions thanthe vaults of the Bank of England could hold .One great financial scandal followed another, as

profiteer after profiteer and swindler after swindlerdecided that the time for bankruptcy was ripe . Com-munists revolted here ; reactionaries there ; and precariouscoalitions of all-good-men maintained a crazy equilibriumin the land .Amid this turmoil, Otto Strasser, a revolutionary

Socialist, began to grope his way towards the future .He affirms, indeed he insists, that he is a revolutionarySocialist, but because so large a proportion of peopleare incapable of distinguishing between words andthings, between real and imitation pearls, between theChurch and Christianity, between the bawling of RuleBritannia and patriotism, I hope to explain, as this bookgoes on, what sort of a man he is .

Misleading to say that Otto Strasser is a revolutionarySocialist . if the reader understands by that somethingdifferent from the thing that Otto Strasser means, orsomething different from the truth .

For instance, if I were forcibly held down and com-pelled by violence to take the label of any one politicalparty, I should have to take that of Socialist, but I shouldfeel myself politically as outcast in the company of Mr .Ramsay MacDonald, Lord Snowden, and Mr . J. H .Thomas as in that of Mr. Chamberlain or Sir JohnSimon, as in that of any present leader of the BritishSocialist Party . I see no party in Britain that answers atall the longing for a better social order that fills me ; they

6s

WAY OF A SOCIALISTall seem to me to be groups representing special interests,without any real ideals, civic sense, or patriotism in thesense of the whole community .

Otto Strasser, as I have told, began to be a revolu-tionary Socialist by inheritance ; he continued hisrevolutionary Socialism by becoming an exceptionallyefficient and courageous officer in the war ; he carried hisrevolutionary Socialism a stage further by joining in thearmed liberation of his homeland from an alien regimewhich at first also claimed the name, Socialist; he laterjoined the Socialist Party; then Hitler's NationalSocialist Party; he is now the bitterest enemy of thatparty, but is also an antagonist of the Socialist Party, ofFascism, and, venomously, of Communism ; because hebelieves that all of these have betrayed, or that nonestands for, that which he wants - German Socialism .

So he is a revolutionary Socialist . The thing ought tobe simple to understand, but in a world where the peopleshave been brought up on catchwords and tags, it isprobably difficult . Nevertheless, I hope that this bookwill ultimately make clear what Otto Strasser wants andwhat he is, for both these things are of great interest .When Munich had been liberated, he began, once

more, to strive after that coveted university degree,scrambled somehow through his exams, and in July 1919was admitted to study at Munich University . His race waswith time, and when the vacation came he rushed to Berlinto continue his studies there . He was now twenty-two .

His great problem was his daily bread. These were, asI said, the turbulent times . He had no money, and hisfamily could give him none . The inflation was beginning .

63

NEMESIS?The mark was already worth but 2o pfennigs, instead ofi oo. He had to earn money, somehow, to pay his feesand achieve that doctorate .

This part of his life shows the enormous energy andcapacity for work of which I have already spoken . It iscommon among Germans, but Otto Strasser has it in anexceptional degree. He studied from eight o'clock in themorning until midday at the university, and then went tothe Reichstag . This sat only in the afternoon and, toearn his fees, he found a post as stenographer in theparliamentary office of the combined Socialist provincialPress; here the reports of the debates were prepared,suitably tinted with pink, the talk-of-the-lobbies sum-marized, and the whole sent out to the Socialist news-papers in the country.

This work lasted until 6 or 7 o'clock in the evening,which left him an hour for a simple meal at Aschinger's,one of the cheap chain-restaurants operated by that firmin Berlin. After that, from 8 till i o o'clock, he took un-paid evening classes for workmen, to whom he taughtGerman history and stenography ; and after that, again,he had to prepare his next morning's work for theuniversity .

After a year, the evening classes were discontinued, andhe filled in the few leisure hours which this left him bystudying Japanese at the Oriental Institute in Berlin .His affections might have expected a rest, in view of allthis ; but even they were not spared ; he found time not toneglect them. Indeed, he has driven them unremittingly,all his life, and does not regret it .

All this time Strasser was on two sticks . His hunger,64

WAY OF A SOCIALISTor mania, for work, however, was not satisfied, and thestate of affairs at the university led him to organize aLeague of ex-Service Students to uphold the rights ofmen whose studies had been interrupted by the war .

The throwing-open-of-all doors had led to the floodingof the universities, and the compressed emergencycourses introduced for such men were being swamped bygirls, by Jews and by others who had not served . Theex-service man, as is always the way after a war, wasbeing elbowed aside by eager interlopers . Strasser, atthe head of his League, succeeded in raising a loud voiceand having this evil remedied .

Another evil, at that time, was the plight of thethousands of young men who starved themselves tofinish their studies and then could obtain no employment,or who could by no means raise the fees to completethese studies. This became so grave a public scandalthat the leading German industrial concerns joined toform a Students Emergency Association, charged to findemployment for the masses of desperate young men whowere wandering aimlessly about, and the secretary ofthis body was Dr . Heinrich Bruning - subsequentlythe Chancellor who fought so hard, but failed, to keepHitler from power, and who is now also in exile . Strasserworked in close collaboration with him .

I have mentioned these early post-war experiences andexperiments of Strasser in organizing his fellows forsome cause because, though they were not specificallypolitical, they show the mind and thought of thisrevolutionary Socialist. They were good undertakings,of benefit to the community .

65

NEMESIS?Now, for the second time, the political impulse, that

broke through for the first time in the episode at BadEibling, began to push him into the fray . He became aregistered member of the German Socialist Party - andimmediately found himself in the forefront of thedissensions which racked that party .

Otto Strasser's view then is his view to-day, the viewthat makes of him an exile and implacable enemy ofHitler, as it finally drove him out of the Socialist Party .He could have had popularity, position and possessionsby compromise, but preferred to be adamant, and thiscommands respect .He sought everywhere, but found nowhere, a German

Socialism; not a State Socialism, which simply meant onebig Capitalist and a horde of officials in place of manycapitalists; not a thing of international roots and affilia-tions, alien in its origins and leadership ; and certainlynot National Socialism as Hitler made it, which wasbut capitalist-militarism masquerading as a Socialistcircus. He has never faltered, that I can find, from hisbeginnings until his present exile, and he seems to bethat rare, if not unique thing, a real National Socialist .The Socialist Party at that time -which had com-

mitted suicide in the moment of its revolutionarytriumph by calling on the regular army and the oldruling classes in general to protect it against the Com-munists - had formed an Einwohnerwehr, or CivilianDefence Corps, as an instrument for the Government touse against the Communist danger . -The majority of thelocal branches of the Socialist Party forbade theirmembers to join it, arguing that they wanted nothing to

66

WAY OF A SOCIALISTdo with `the officers' and with militarism, since theywere internationalists and pacifists. Otto Strasserstrongly advocated membership of the Einwohnerwehr,arguing that if the Socialists did not take it under theirwing, the reactionaries would, and in his district, thatpopulous quarter of Berlin called Steglitz, he carried theday. Steglitz joined the Einwohnerwehr, and Otto Strasserbecame the commander of Steglitz's Hundertschaft, theunits of the Einwohnerwehr being called by this name of`Hundreds'.

All this was in the spring of 192o . There followed thefirst attempt, called the Kapp Putsch, of the old rulingclasses in Germany to dethrone the Socialist-CentristGovernment, to sweep away all the newcomers who hadsucceeded to power in Germany, by means of armed force .The Kapp Putsch was rather like the von Epp march

on Munich, save that it had not the same justification ;the Government in Berlin was predominantly Socialist,and dithering Socialist at that, but it was non-Com-munist and anti-Communist, and had no importedMoscovites in it . By way of contrast, the Kappistsimported a man of similar type with them as Press Chief- the Hungarian Jew, Anglican Clergyman, BritishMember of Parliament, convicted traitor, and pro-fessional swindler, Trebitsch Lincoln! This sort of manseems to pop up in every shady affair in the history ofEurope. Incidentally, Hitler's professed anti-Semitism,as I have often tried to make people understand, isanother lie; witness the international string-pullingJewess who was go-between in his negotiations withBritish politicians .

67

NEMESIS?The Kapp soldiers ruled Berlin with their machine-

guns for a day or two, until the general strike called bythe fugitive Berlin Government caused the collapse oftheir adventure and their ignominious withdrawal, butthey never attacked Steglitz, where Otto Strasser andhis Socialist Hundertschaft were waiting, armed, to receivethem. By now, the officer who had given his men`patriotic instruction' in the war, who had challengedKurt Eisner in the Red meeting at Bad Eibling, who hadhelped to drive the .Communists out of Munich, was aSocialist Hundertschaftler, standing ready to give combatto the reactionaries . The Kappists preferred not to useforce against the Steglitz Hundred ; Steglitz, surroundedbut not occupied, was left a peaceful Socialist island inKappist Berlin .

When the Kappists withdrew, the convinced Socialiststhought the day of real Socialism had come . TheGovernment, . too cowardly and too scared of thereactionaries to carry out its Socialist programmebefore, now had the power . At Bielefeld, an agreementwas signed between the Government, represented byKarl Severing, and the delegates of the Socialists forthe dismissal of the Police Minister, Noske, who had beentoo weak with the reactionaries and had allowed theKapp Putsch to happen, for the socialization of heavyindustry and for the partitioning of the big estates . Onthe strength of these promises, the Socialist workers laiddown their arms .The Communists and the Independent Socialists, who

were near-Communists, did not, and were defeated bythe same Kapp soldiers who had seized power in Berlin .

68

WAY OF A SOCIALISTAnd as soon as that was accomplished, the Governmentdisavowed the promises made by Severing .

Otto Strasser, still following without deviation his idealof a German Socialism, now found himself with enemieson all sides. A bitter critic of the Government's betrayalof its Socialist policy and promises, he incurred theenmity of the party bosses, intent only on keeping theirjobs, and at a Socialist meeting in Steglitz was denouncedfrom the platform as `a police spy' . (The Police Ministerand the Police Chief, so illogical was this charge, wereboth Socialists .)At the university, however, where he was still

struggling after that degree, he was equally unpopularamong the students, the majority of whom were whatwe should to-day call Fascists or Nazis, and was pilloriedas the leader of a `Red Hundred' . Arriving one morningat the university, he found a notice on the boardannouncing that he had been debarred from furtherstudy there `pending a disciplinary investigation', andon his furious inquiry for the reason was told that hiswar record was suspect. By producing the official warhistory of his regiment, and other documents, he wasable to reduce the Rector to a state of contrition and tohave the insinuation withdrawn with all ceremony inthe presence of the entire Students' Corps of theuniversity, in full regalia .But an uncompromising man was a lonely man in

those days, as now. Disgusted with everything, he leftthe Socialist Party. The second political period in hislife came to an end. For five years he stood aloof fromparties, and for three years aloof, almost, from politics ;

69

NEMESIS?complete abstention from them would be an impos-sibility for this man .In March 1921, at long last, he took his degree, at

Wurzburg, and is thus fated to be known to the endof his days as Doctor Otto Strasser . That opened thedoor to a minor appointment in the Ministry of Food,where he prosaically represented the interest of authorityin artificial fertilizers and the cultivation of moors .This lasted two years . Then, one day, Count vonHerding, his commanding officer in the war, visitedthe Ministry. He had become head of a big industrialconcern, saw Otto Strasser, and offered him an importantpost in it . Strasser gladly accepted . So, until 1923, ashe says, 'ich sass bray in meinem Ministerium and inmeiner Industriestellung, and habe eigentlich keinePolitik getrieben'. `I sat like a good boy in the Ministryand in my job, and hardly touched politics .'November 1923 was to alter that, because it brought

the Hitler Putsch in Munich and a change in OttoStrasser's views about Hitler ; but a digression is necessaryto keep the thread of this story unbroken .

Otto Strasser had first met Hitler in the autumn of1g2o, at the time of his embitterment with all parties .He was on holiday, visiting his parents in Bavaria, whenhis brother Gregor invited him to Landeshut, saying thatGeneral Ludendorff, a great hero of Otto's from thewar, and one Adolf Hitler, then little known, would bepresent. At this lunch, says Otto Strasser, `Ludendorffmade a great impression on me. Hitler did not. He wastoo servile to Ludendorff, and behaved himself like abattalion orderly speaking to a general . Ludendorff

70

WAY OF A SOCIALISTwas like a block of granite ; Hitler, like a nervous, half-hysterical spouter. He used the Jews as a commondenominator for all political problems . I told Gregorthat I did not want to join the party and would preferto wait ; the only thing I liked about it, I said, was thename, National Socialist, and Du ['and you', that is, hisbrother, Gregor) . Throughout 1921 and 1922, when Iwas out of politics, I had many disputes with Gregorabout Hitler and the Party. I never felt drawn towards itand would not join . Hitler, after that lunch, alwaysspoke of me as an Intellektbestie .'

Intellektbestie is difficult adequately to translate . `Oneof those intellectual cranks', perhaps . It is the sort ofterm a man of inferior merit may use about anotherwhose arguments have irritated and baffled him . Hitlercannot argue ; the slightest hint of contradiction orchallenge makes him angry and hysterical . His great goodfortune, or skill, is that he never had to join in open debatewith an adversary, entering Parliament and becomingdictator only when all opposition had been crushed .

But to resume the thread of the story : Gregor Strasser,several months before this lunch, had heard of Hitler,travelled to Munich, found himself in wide agreementwith Hitler's views, and thereupon enlisted his littleprivate army bodily in the National Socialist Party asits independent Gau, or regional organization, forLower Bavaria . Until then, the National Socialist Partyexisted only in skeleton form in Munich alone ; the recruit-ment of Gregor Strasser's Verband .Nationalgesinnter SoldatenNiederbayerns marked its first extension outside Munich .

Gregor Strasser became Regional Leader, with7I

NEMESIS?Heinrich Himmler, the dreaded Secret Police and SSChief of to-day, as his secretary. Gregor Strasser hadalready seen that he could not indefinitely keep hisprivate army of foot and artillery together ; those dayscannot be described as piping ones of peace, but the warwas nevertheless receding, the times were growingquieter, the men were getting on with their jobs andforgetting to clean their rifles or turn up on parade, andGregor Strasser thus realized that he must either disbandhis organization or turn it into something political . TheReds had been driven from Bavaria, anyway ; indeed, inall Germany, Bavaria alone was Red-free ; everywhereelse the Socialists shared power .

In Bavaria, von Epp and his chief-of-staff ErnstRohm now ruled. After the triumphal eviction of'theReds in May i g i g, instead of restoring the legal, exiledGovernment, they had, against the wish of Berlin andof the Reichswehr regular troops who had helped them,installed a bourgeois government without any Socialists .They wished to use Bavaria as a base from which therest of Germany could be similarly cleansed .

Rohm, an energetic soldier of revolutionary mind,was the real ruler of Bavaria; von Epp was a fine soldier,but not a brilliant thinker . Rohm had all the politicsand parties of Munich at his fingertips, and employedan army of agents. Among them was the man AdolfHitler. One day Rohm (to whom all political meetingsin Munich had to be reported) said to Hitler, `I've anannouncement here of a meeting of something calledthe N.S.D.A.P . (.Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-partei) . Go along and see what sort of a show it is' .

72

ERNST ROHMWide World Photos

WAY OF A SOCIALISTHere you see how, twenty years ago as I write, the

plan or plot was born in an office in Munich that nowhas let the devil loose on us all again . Von Epp, a remark-ably fine figure of a soldier, probably never had anunworthy motive in his life, and simply burned toclean up his country, as he understood cleanliness, andmake it a power among nations again . Rohm was athought too bawdy even for a hardened mind, but bythe common judgment of his acquaintances was a goodand loyal companion, a brave soldier, and an excep-tionally good organizer .

What freakish trick of fate caused him to pick on thisepileptic mongrel Hitler, whose virtues are even less thanhis vices, and he has no vices, this man who cannotprove what he did in Vienna before the war, or evenadequately what he did in the war, or what he did inMunich after the war - until Rohm picked on him?

Rohm, sitting at his desk, chose his own executionerin the nondescript fellow standing at attention on theother side of it . More, he chose the man who was toplunge all Europe into war again . More still, he chose theman who, as I am now coming to think, is built entirelyof hatreds, but among those hatreds keeps the worst forthe people whose destiny he has in his hand . For thestrangest passages in the conversations with Hitler whichDr. Hermann Rauschning reports are those verbalorgasms in which he frequently speaks of `sacrificing thelives of one or two million Germans', of his determination,in some particular circumstances, `to sacrifice a newGerman generation', and so on .

Hitler went to the meeting and reported to Rohm (all73

NEMESIS?this information comes from Otto Strasser) : `This is aworkman's party. It's something good, the sort of thingwe could use, Herr Hauptmann .' Rohm was obsessedwith Germany's isolation and defencelessness in theworld, with the need for a new army - a secret army .He saw that the old-soldier organizations, like Strasser'sVerband and the various Free Corps, deteriorated as the warreceded, and he wanted, as did Gregor Strasser, to builda political movement which would reinvigorate them .But his real aim was to create, in the guise of StormTroopers, a new army under the cloak of that politicalmovement .

Hitler, with his extraordinary instinct, had recognizedthat the little N .S.D.A.P. was the ideal instrument forthe purpose he and his masters had in mind ; hence thereport, `We can use this, Herr Hauptmann' . Rohm hadalready remarked Hitler's talent for propaganda andpolitical agitation, and had chosen him as one of hisagents for that reason, and now said to him, in effect,`Buy the firm out ; we can make something of it' .

Rohm's sole condition was the formation of the StormTroops, the Brown Army . Through this, he counted onremaining the master of the movement . He frequentlysaid : `All the rest is a matter of indifference to me ; I needa well-disciplined private army' .

To this end, he gave Hitler the money to have placardsprinted, and to buy an obscure little local sporting-sheet,which published racing-tips and football results, calledthe Volkischer Beobachter . As the man with the money,Hitler was able to throw _out the founders of thelittle party. He never altered its programme, which then

74

WAY OF A SOCIALISTalready existed, and would never permit any discussionof it - though hardly any of its tenets have been fulfilledby him. The Brown Army was formed, by Rohm ; for itRohm borrowed the brown shirt from one of the FreeCorps (Rossbach's) and the swastika from another(Ehrhardt's) .Thus did a soldier of fortune sign his own death

warrant and bring disaster on Europe again, that day inMunich twenty years ago as I write. A few other detailsabout this birth of the Hitler Party, culled from OttoStrasser's special knowledge, deserve to be recordedhere

`One of Hitler's innumerable lies, in the legend he hasbuilt up, is that he was "the seventh member" of theN.S.D.A.P. At the time when Rohm sent him to reporton it, it already had several hundred members. Hebecame the seventh member of the executive committee, incharge of publicity. Nor did he invent "NationalSocialism" . The party was founded by one Harrar andAnton Drexler ; they copied it from an Austrian partyof the same name, the National Socialist Party, foundedby the Sudeten Germans Jung and Knirsch ; and they intheir turn took the idea from the Czechs . A young Czechlabour leader, Klovacs, in about 1892, seceded with theCzech workers from the Socialist Party in pre-warAustria-Hungary because its leadership and methodswere "Jewish, international and German", and foundedin Bohemia the first "National Socialist Party", whosemost famous members were, later, Masaryk and Benesh .The only man in the party who has no conception ofreal National Socialism is Adolf Hitler .'

75

NEMESIS?All this information is Otto Strasser's . The last

sentence is literally his . It is, in my judgment, literallytrue .

Such were the beginnings of the movement which tookroot and grew - to the misfortune of Europe, under theleadership of a professional perjurer - while OttoStrasser was `sitting like a good boy in his Ministry andhis job and not bothering with politics' . In 1923 cameits first attempt to seize power, and one effect of thiswas to bring Otto Strasser back into politics .

This was the story . By 1923, von Epp and Rohm nolonger ruled Bavaria, but had been displaced in favourof a regime more in sympathy with Berlin . Rohm hadalready been elbowed aside by Hitler (who later recalledhim, from Bolivia, to take over the Brown Army) .Hitler, with General Ludendorff and Goring, nowStorm Troop commander, attempted to displace theBavarian Government by force, hoping, as von Epp andRohm had previously hoped, from Bavaria to reach outand rule the Reich . Gregor Strasser was commander ofthe Landeshut Battalion in this exploit. Hitler, marchingwith his Storm Troops in the expectation that he wouldnot be resisted, was received by the bullets of the regulartroops. He fled, was arrested and imprisoned ; Luden-dorff was wounded ; Goring was wounded but escapedabroad; Gregor Strasser was sentenced to one and a halfyears imprisonment . The first Hitler Putsch collapsed .This brought a complete change in Otto Strasser's

opinions about Hitler. Until then, he had not takenthe National Socialist Party seriously . He had regardedit as half-reactionary, and therefore no party for a

76

WAY OF A SOCIALISTrevolutionary Socialist; or, to quote his own words, as a`cheap edition of reaction, with a red cover on it todelude the buyer' .But in Munich, on November 9th, 1923, the bullets

of a reactionary regime were fired at Hitler and his men .`My brother was right after all,' thought Otto Strasser .`This is a revolutionary movement, this is a Socialistmovement. Hitler's flirtations with the generals andbig business will have to stop now .'This view was strengthened by Ludendorff's famous

subsequent speech - the fascination of Ludendorff formany German officers must not be forgotten - in whichhe said, `Now I know that the salvation and reconstruc-tion of Germany are not possible in collaboration with thereactionaries' .

Ludendorff at that time solemnly discarded all furthercaste-fellowship with his kind . Otto Strasser's regimenthad sent a circular letter to all its officers, includingStrasser, telling them that they must choose between theCrown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria (the heir to theabolished crown) and General Ludendorff, and make adeclaration of loyalty in this sense . Otto Strasserimmediately plumped for Ludendorff, and was forthwithexcluded from the Officers' Corps of his regiment .

By these means, Otto Strasser, the fervent admirer ofthe German Officers' Corps, the Free Corps, anti-Redsoldier of Munich, the Socialist Hundertschaftler ofSteglitz, the undaunted and undeviating seeker after`German Socialism', was drawn again into the whirlpoolof politics . He thought he had found the thing hebelieved in .

77

NEMESIS?His brother Gregor remained in prison, with Hitler,

until at the election of May 1924 he was elected toparliament and thereupon released. Hitler remained inprison, writing Mein Kampfas he says - another untruth .Hitler being in prison, Gregor Strasser took over theleadership of the entire party, including North Germany,whither it had now spread through the recruitment, enmasse, of the Volkische movement of Graefe.

One of Gregor Strasser's first actions was to expelthe clown Julius Streicher from the party, which he thenproceeded to organize and expand . He was its head,and remained its real head for some time, even afterHitler's release from prison, for two good reasons . First,Hitler, though free, was forbidden to speak throughoutthe whole of North Germany, and could not have takenpart in the work for this reason . Second, and this showsthe financial plight of the men who made Hitler's partyfor him, Gregor Strasser, as a Reichstag Deputy, heldthe coveted free-railway-pass which enabled him totravel to and from Berlin without cost, and this wasvitally important . Hitler, as an Austrian, could not,even if he would, have been returned to Parliament, andthis is another example of his stupendous luck, for in opendebate he would so quickly have been routed, that hisrise to power and triumph would have been almost in-conceivable ; the myth would have been shattered toosoon.

Hitler was a discredited and almost forgotten man .Gregor Strasser, far more popular, much better under-stood, was the leader of the National Socialist Party .But Hitler had one great source of strength . He was the

78

WAY OF A SOCIALISTonly one of them all with any money . This he obtainedfrom big-business magnates and other interested partiesbehind the scenes, by selling out piecemeal, in privateparleys, the Socialist parts of the National Socialistprogramme, to which the Strassers and their friendsattached vital importance. But that only became knownmuch later .

Otto Strasser, after that Munich Putsch, gingerly beganto feel the political waters again with one toe by writingleading articles under a pseudonym for the VolkischerBeobachter . Now his brother Gregor came to him andrenewed his urgent appeals . `We are independent inNorth Germany now', he said, `and we can give theparty substance and meaning, a countenance and anideology. Now, lieber Otto, you will have to help me .WE will make and mould this party .'

In this way, Otto Strasser, the revolutionary Socialistin persistent search of revolutionary Socialism, joinedthe National Socialist Party in 1925 . Not Hitler, thepolitical foundling without a clean page in his record, butthe two Strassers, men of clear ideas and unimpeachablehistory, were at that time the real leaders of the party .Believing that he had found the political haven where hefain would be, Otto Strasser set to work .

CHAPTER 6

HEIL AND FAREWELL

FIVE years passed from that day when Otto Strasser,joined the Heil-Hitlerists to the day when he bade Hitlerfarewell, telling him to his face that he was a windbag,a fraud and a humbug, and resumed his lonely fight fora German, revolutionary, Socialism . (Neither he nor hisbrother Gregor, incidentally, ever used the form ofaddress, `Mein Fiihrer', in speaking to Hitler. They wereboth men of sturdy and independent character and calledhim 'Herr Hitler' to the end .)

These five years were filled with the struggle betweenthe Strassers and Hitler for the power within theNational Socialist Party, for the power in Germany .They did not see the struggle in that light, they did notfeel themselves to be working against Hitler. They onlysaw that Hitler was betraying the things he claimedto represent, the promises he had made, and sought tobring him back to them . Inevitably, the men whothought as they did grouped themselves around theStrassers . But they did not consciously struggle forpower, only for the soul of Hitler and the principles of theparty .

This conflict of itself developed into a struggle forpower, because Hitler was not interested in principleshe had proclaimed to catch votes ; they were for him notprinciples at all, but tactics, and he implacably sought to

8o

HEIL AND FAREWELLget rid of any who tried, by pinning him to principles, tocramp what he regarded as tactics .In this way he came to look upon all men who had

really believed in the professed tenets of National Social-ism as his enemies, as intriguing foes within the walls,and he turned on them, to destroy them . But these mennaturally resisted, feeling that they were right and thathe was wrong, or misled. They had invested time,money, strength and idealism in the party, and wouldnot give way or allow themselves to be brusquelyelbowed aside . In this way, the struggle became one forpower .

It ended in the triumph of Hitler and the rout of theStrassers. Otto Strasser seems to me to-day, when I lookback upon those years in Germany, to be the only manamong all the leading National Socialists who both sawthat Hitler was a cheap cheat, and had the courage tosay so and take up the struggle against him .

Even his brother Gregor seems never quite to havediscerned this truth. His loyalty to Hitler survived alltests, and his persistent argument, in his innumerablediscussions with the disbelieving Otto, was that `thehorse is bucking, certainly, but it is going the right wayand we shall contrive to stay on it', to which Ottoinvariably replied : `You are wrong ; the horse is not buck-ing, but travelling in the wrong direction, and we cannotalter that' .Gregor had an easy-going streak in his pugnacious

nature which always led him, in the decisive moment, togive way to Hitler, and this affected the course ofEuropean history. For ifhe had broken away from Hitler

81

NEMESIS?with his brother, the National Socialist Party wouldcertainly have split, and Germany and Europe wouldhave been spared the militarist nightmare in which theynow live ; or, even if the party had not split, the claim-to-the-succession of the two Strassers, to-day, would beirresistible. The one Strasser alone, Otto, has a muchharder and longer way to travel, but he is well in therunning .

The whole dispute around which this quarrel andstruggle revolved was the old, old doubt which had filledOtto Strasser until the day when the forces of reactionfired on Hitler at Munich - whether Hitler would betrue to his Socialist professions, whether he really meantto lead Germany to a new social order and to a GermanSocialism, or whether he was the catspaw of the old,embattled ruling classes in Germany, big business andbig landownership .

After five years with Hitler, Otto Strasser was con-firmed and strengthened in the doubts he had felt before1923, and in 1930 he accepted the logical consequence ofthis - he bade Hitler farewell .

His brother, easy going, not yet convinced and lothto abandon a loyalty, wandered on at Hitler's side, filledwith inward misgivings, loth to break away, and sawOtto Strasser's words come true when Hitler came topower. But this was too late ; Gregor was then a brokenand a doomed man . Otto, clearer-sighted and moreresolute, though less of a great popular figure, had cutthe hawser in time, and lives to pursue his mission -that of avenging Germany and of avenging GregorStrasser .

82

HEIL AND FAREWELLThe story of those five years, between his half-con-

vinced, still doubting, surrender to Gregor Strasser'spersuasions, and his final breakaway is therefore morethat , of a direct conflict between Hitler and OttoStrasser, with Gregor continually trying to make themlink arms, than between Hitler and the two Strassers .This gives Otto Strasser his claim to attention to-day,and his eligibility to a big part in the future .For he was right; Gregor was wrong ; and Hitler was

wrong, or rather Hitler is so mendacious a man thatwe do not know yet whether he was wrong or not, be-cause we do not know, and perhaps never shall know,what he really wanted. In any case, the struggle wasjoined between him and Otto Strasser . Between them,placatory, stood Gregor Strasser . In the background,sometimes advancing to the front of the stage to put in aword or two or do a little stiletto-stuff, moved otherfigures - the malignant hobgoblin Goebbels ; the Fal-staffian but vindictive Goring ; the bespectacled bosom-snake Himmler.

Five stormy years!When Otto Strasser joined his brother Gregor, and

became Hitler's liege, Gregor was the real head of theparty in the vital and largest area of the Reich - NorthGermany - from which Hitler was barred .'

1 In the German Republic of those days, the various states had substantialindependent powers . Prussia was bigger than all the other sixteen states to-gether; having 38,000,000 inhabitants of a total of 62,000,000 and an area of113,000 square miles of a total area of i8i,ooo, Prussia comprised over three-fifths of the entire Reich . Prussia and other North German states had at thattime banned Hitler, as a once-convicted Putschist, from entering their territory,so that his activity was in practice restricted to the largest South German stateof Bavaria, with 7,500,000 inhabitants. The political battle, however, wasnaturally waged first and foremost in North Germany, particularly Prussia,

83

NEMESIS?The party was in a bad way -the ignominious

collapse of the Munich adventure lay but eighteenmonths behind it - and the two Strassers set diligentlyto work to reinvigorate it. Gregor took as his personal,paid assistant an unknown man, the sycophantic dwarfwho later, at his downfall, was to prance around himwith waspish jeers and taunts, Doctor Joseph Goebbels .The Strassers began their work by issuing the NationalSocialist News-Letters, published for the officials of theparty only, and in these the principles and doctrine ofthe Socialist, or Strasser, wing of the party were expoundedand developed.

The `fight against Munich', that is, the fight betweenthe tactician Hitler in Munich and the convincedSocialists Gregor and Otto Strasser in Berlin, dominatedthe life of the party at this time, and Goebbels, withwhich was not only preponderant in size and population but also contained thecapital, the seat of the Reich Government, and that of the powerful PrussianGovernment. Because he was thus unable to conduct his campaign on whatwas actually the battleground - Prussia - . Hitler delegated the leadership thereto Gregor Strasser (in this narrative the term 'North Germany', as indicatingthe area of Gregor Strasser's authority, for practical purposes may be taken tomean Prussia, although other small states in the North were also included) .This meant that Gregor Strasser, although nominally Hitler's representative,was in a position of enormous power in the party throughout the greater partof the Reich . As his views differed from those of Hitler in essential principles,this led to a state of conflict between Gregor Strasser, at the head of the partyin North Germany, and Hitler in Munich, and the history of his party's strugglefor power and ultimate triumph cannot be understood without a knowledge ofthis simultaneous struggle between Gregor Strasser, supported by his brotherOtto, and Hitler . It was actually a struggle for the soul of the party . Someyears later, the ban on Hitler's appearance in Prussia and North Germany waslifted. Gregor Strasser's personal hold on the party was then gradually broken,by means which will be shown in the course of this narrative . The final en-counter came on the eve of the attainment of power on January 3oth ; 1933,when the policy advocated by Gregor Strasser was rejected in favour of thatrecommended by Goring, and Gregor Strasser's rivals in the party, Goringand Goebbels chief among them, accused Strasser, to Hitler, of treachery. Hisrelegation and disgrace followed ; and his murder on June 3oth, 1934, was thesequel, and the closing act in the drama .

84

GREGOR STRASSER

HEIL AND FAREWELLhis talent for telling rhetorical thrusts, took a leadingpart in it on the Strasser side . Suspicion and distrust ofHitler were widespread, and the conflict blazed into openflame at the famous `Leaders' Meeting' at Hanover inOctober 1925, which was called to concert measures forimproving and strengthening the party organizationthroughout Northern Germany, and for removingdissensions . It was attended by such notable Nazileaders of to-day as Viktor Lutze, the present BrownArmy Commander; Rust, the Schools Minister ; Kerrl,the Church Minister ; Robert Ley, the Labour FrontLeader; Hildebrandt, the Mecklenburg Statthalter ; andof course the two Strassers and Goebbels .

Hitler, banned from North Germany, sent to it arepresentative, Gottfried Feder. The meeting developedinto an open expression of dissatisfaction with Hitler,and one resolution after another was passed which clearlyshowed this feeling .The meeting was unanimous, save for Dr. Ley, who

repeatedly protested that resolutions and decisions takenwithout reference to Hitler were invalid, whereon Rustexclaimed, We will not tolerate a Pope in our party',and Goebbels proposed that Hitler should be expelled .Gregor Strasser tactfully slurred over these things, statingthat he was not a candidate against Hitler for the leader-ship, but was concerned to improve the organization inNorth Germany, which had been entrusted to him .

The conference then resolved that all North Germanbranches of the party should be amalgamated in a singleNorth German organization under Gregor Strasser ; thatall officials of the North German party must look to the

85

NEMESIS?Strasser News-Letters for their political guidance ; that apublishing house should be founded in Berlin, underGregor and Otto Strasser, which would take over allpublicity and press work for the party in North Germany .Further, it was resolved, and this was vital, that thepolitical programme (for `real German Socialism')drawn up by the Strassers was accepted, and the entirebody of North German leaders, save Ley, pledged them-selves to vote, at the next National Congress of the entireparty, for this programme to be substituted for thefamous, but obsolete and imprecise, 'Twenty-Five Points'taken over by Hitler from the little party he had boughtout, with Rohm's money, in Munich in i g i g .

These Twenty-Five Points were adopted by Hitleras his programme and he had always refused to allowany discussion of them . He had, however, added a rider,which was in effect an annulment, to one of the mostimportant of them, that which demanded the break-upof big estates for settlement purposes . This modificationwas made by him as a concession to big-business and big-landownership interests with which he was, so long ago,already in privy negotiation . This demand for theexpropriation of land, however, was one of the mostimportant things in the Twenty-Five Points, and one ofthose which justified the claim of the party to the nameNational Socialist. Its emendation made Hitler mostsuspect to such men as Otto Strasser . Whatever thenationalistic achievements of Hitler's party, the Na-tional Socialists of genuine conviction have not forgottenHitler's disregard of the vital points of the program, onthe basis of which the people voted the Party into power :

86

HEIL AND FAREWELLthe abolition of unearned income and of war profits, thesharing of corporation profits, aid to the small middle-class trader, better old-age insurance, and land for thepeasant.

The Hanover meeting, with its rebuff to Hitler, itsendorsement of the Socialist part of the National Social-ist programme, and its declaration of allegiance toGregor Strasser, was thus a triumph for the two Strassersand their doctrines . It was followed immediately by theirdiscomfiture, the first of the setbacks which ultimatelyled to Otto Strasser's breakaway from Hitler and toGregor Strasser's dismissal and murder . Hitler out-manoeuvred them in this manner.

On receiving Feder's report from Hanover, he calleda counter-meeting of all South German leaders atBamberg, and invited the North German leaders,Strasser's men, to attend . None of them went, because atthis time politics was an expensive spare-time luxury forthese men, most of whom were living on the edge ofpoverty or had businesses which they could not leave ;even the fare was a serious obstacle,

Only Gregor Strasser, who had his famous free-railway-pass, and Goebbels, who had Zoo marks a month fromStrasser, attended . Goebbels there first saw Hitler. Hesaw more. He saw Hitler's host of salaried officialsfrom the embryo Brown House in Munich (Hitler wasgetting money from the magnates) and he saw swarms ofHitler's motor cars. He mentally contrasted this withthe poverty-stricken picture of the North Germanleaders' meeting and with his own paltry zoo marks amonth .

87

NEMESIS?Thereon, Goebbels decided that he had been standing

on his bad leg and shifted his weight on to the good one .In sonorous and repentant tones, he declared that hecould not associate himself further with the decisions ofHanover, whither he had called for the expulsion ofHitler.

Gregor Strasser was left isolated. His own supporterswere absent. Goebbels had publicly betrayed him. Hewas poor; Hitler had the money. He shrugged hisshoulders and accepted defeat .

He was left at the head of the North German organiz-ation, because Hitler was not allowed in North Germanyanyway, but Hitler refused to discuss the Strasser pro-gramme. The Twenty-Five Points were restored to theirplace as the official programme of the party .From that day dated the deadly enmity between the

Strassers and Goebbels, which may yet see a spectacularissue . Goebbels, purring, left the meeting in Hitler'smotor car. Max Amann, the head of Hitler's EherPublishing House, gazed curiously at him and murmuredto Hitler : `This is the Mephisto of our party .'As an instance of the kind of issue which agitated

opinion within the party in those days, and led to suchdissensions, I may mention that the dispute about theconfiscation of the property of the former reigningdynasties was in progress . On the ground that war-disabled men, inflation victims and others had had nocompensation, the Strassers, and the bulk of the partywere for confiscation ; Hitler, who was bargaining withthe magnates behind the scenes, was against it .

Nevertheless, the Strassers resumed the struggle in88

HEIL AND FAREWELLNorth Germany, and Gregor persuaded Otto, asGoebbels had left him, to give up his job in Count vonHertling's concern and devote all his time to the party .This happened at the beginning of 1926 . With themoney he received as compensation for surrendering acontract which still had two and a half years to run, OttoStrasser founded the North German publishing house,the Kampfverlag, and began to publish National Socialistnewspapers in Berlin and throughout North Germany .In the years 1926-28 the entire North German

section of the National Socialist Party was inspired byand controlled through the Kampfverlag, of which theStrassers and a third partner, Hinkel, held the shares inequal parts. It was bigger than Hitler's own publishinghouse, the Eherverlag, at Munich. Through it, the greatstruggle for the mind of Germany was waged, a struggleof ideas, of organization, of publicity and of finance, abattle between Munich and Berlin, between Hitler andthe Strassers, between Eherverlag and Kampfverlag .

In 1927 Hitler delivered his great blow, one whichwas eventually to prove fatal to the Strassers .Looking roui.d for an instrument to use against the

Strassers, whose incorrigible convictions hampered histactical ideas, he picked on Goebbels, the penitent ofBamberg, the detested enemy of the two brothers inBerlin. Goebbels he made Regional Leader of the partyin Berlin, in 1927, and instructed him to begin publica-tion of a newspaper, the Angrf; rival to those issued bythe Kampfverlag. His mission was to be a thorn in theStrasser side .

It was a curious position. Otto Strasser, who held no89

NEMESIS?party office, was formally entitled to publish the officialparty organ for Berlin ; Goebbels, who was the partyleader in Berlin, published a non-official paper in com-petition with it. Gregor Strasser was Hitler's deputy,the National Socialist leader for all North Germany ;Goebbels was made leader for Berlin in order to under-mine and overthrow him. This was one of the earlierexamples of Hitler's methods of attaining his ends .

For three years, from 1927 to 1930, the vendetta waspursued with tremendous bitterness, at first behind thescenes, then in the open. The vendors of the rival news-papers fought each other in the streets, while the Social-ists and Communists laughed and rubbed their hands ;but in this feud Goebbels had the advantage, for he wasthe commander of the Berlin Storm Troops .

One day, Hitler himself came to Otto Strasser's well-appointed office in the NUrnbergerstrasse and tried toinduce him voluntarily to suspend publication of hisnewspaper, which preached National Socialism, theBerliner Arbeiterzeitung . Strasser answered : `Why shouldI? We were first in the field . Our papers have appearedfor years . We have the official party authorization topublish. We did the spadework and broke the ground .The party and its press are now thriving, thanks to ourwork. Tell Goebbels to stop publication of his paper.'

Hitler answered : `This is not a question of right, butof might. Goebbels has the Storm Troops, and what canyou do if twenty Storm Troopers come here one day andsmash the place up?'

Otto Strasser opened his drawer, laid his revolver onthe table - I said before that he loves this gesture - and

go

HEIL AND FAREWELLsaid, `Herr Hitler, in that case you will have eight StormTroopers the less' . Hitler shouted : `But you can't shootmy SA men!' Said Otto Strasser : `I thought you saidthey were Goebbels's SA men . If they are yours, youcan stop them . Anyway, I'll shoot anybody who breaksin here with the intention of attacking me .'

`We should have broken openly with Hitler then', saysOtto Strasser . `That was the right moment, and we werein a very strong position. But Gregor always wanted toavoid the open conflict. He thought we should win in theend anyway, and should appear to give way by transfer-ring our offices outside Berlin .'

Between 1929 and 1930 the rise of the party was sorapid that the Kampfverlag grew rapidly, and had tomake daily papers out of several of its weekly papers . Thefriction with Hitler and Goebbels consequently increased .At last Hitler sent for the three partners in the Kampfver-lag, the two Strassers and Hinkel, to come to Munich .(Hinkel is to-day Reich Commissioner for the JewishQuestion, having retained Hitler's favour through hissubsequent compliance in this matter .)`Hitler behaved like a madman . He shrieked and

roared at us, and then flattered us . He offered to buy theKampfverlag from us at any price we liked to name, andoffered Hinkel and myself deputy's seats in the Reichstag .[A deputy's seat in Germany was a fairly profitablething.] Gregor was ready to sell, but his share was onlya third. I refused point blank and contrived to getHinkel to refuse also. The conversation lasted manyhours and at times was conducted in a Bedlam-likeatmosphere. At one point I remarked mildly, "You are

91

NEMESIS?mistaken, Herr Hitler", whereon Hitler shouted, "Icannot err, everything that I do and say is history" .'

The tension approached explosion point . At last thebreach came. The immediate cause was a metalworkers'strike in Saxony .The Strassers and the North German section of the

party supported the strikers, and the official order of theparty to its members was `strike'. The Employers'Federation then sent an ultimatum to Hitler that itwould cut off its contributions to his exchequer unless thestrike order were at once countermanded . Hitler orderedthe Saxon Branch of the party to countermand the strikeorder and instruct its members not to take part . TheNational Socialist Leader for Saxony, Mutschmann,gave way, but the Strassers held fast, and the officialpress of the party urged the workers to continue thestrike . Thus, the open conflict broke out -in thespring of 1930 .

Hitler came to Berlin and had two long and stormymeetings with Otto Strasser, who suffered at them fromhis old handicap - Gregor had begged him not toprovoke a split, because in that event he would stay withHitler. Gregor's motive was always the same ; he be-lieved that the National Socialist movement was goodand that the only fault was one of tactics, which couldlater be corrected ; he did not believe that anythingfundamental was wrong with the party . Otto took theopposite view .

These two encounters with Hitler are of great interest .Otto Strasser recorded them immediately afterwards, asliterally as he could remember them, and published them

92

HEIL AND FAREWELLin his Aufbau des Deutschen Sozialismus (Structure ofGerman Socialism) in 1931 .

Thus for many years the record of those two terrificconversations has been on record and in print, availableto all who wanted to study the man Hitler . To-daythe accounts of his hysterical orgasms in such conversa-tions come from all sides. Ambassadors, who formerlycounted among his admirers, publish them. His formerlieutenants publish them . Mental specialists all agreethat this man is mad . The peers who wooed him allagree that this man is mad. Everybody agrees, quitesuddenly, that this man is mad .

Why? He has not done anything now that he did notdo, repeatedly, in the seven preceding years of his might- save the pact with the Bolshevists. He has not saidanything now that he did not say over and over againin those years and long before . He has touched no summitof delirium that then was beyond his reach .

Here, in these two protracted wrangles with OttoStrasser ten years ago, you find it all - the shouting andscreaming, the half-witted jargon - like a low music-hall comedian caricaturing a diehard major of the mostexaggerated type - even the threats and the ultimatum.

On the one side, Otto Strasser, who wanted a straightanswer on an issue of major political importance . On theother side, the cheapjack ranting of Hitler, who pulver-ized the clearest question and the most logical argumentalike with shouted retorts of `Marxism', `Bolshevism',`Democratic bunkum', `Nonsense' and so on . There itall is, the same picture, in every detail, with which theworld has become familiar since the outbreak of war .

93

NEMESIS?Nowadays, people think : `Of course, a man who be-

haves like that is clearly irresponsible, a public danger .If the world had only known' . But the world could haveknown. It could have known from this account of OttoStrasser's of his two-day struggle with Hitler . But it didnot want to know . Strasser's narrative would even havebeen discounted, as exaggerated, by anybody who tookthe trouble to read it . To-day, the world has becomesufficiently familiar with Hitler to know that it is a life-like portrait, true in every detail .

It is, indeed, the first such portrait, painted long beforeHitler came to power, at a time when the world was onlylanguidly interested in Hitler and did not believe in hiscapacity to do the harm he has done . It is strange thatit did not attract attention later, when Hitler had cometo power, and any fifth-rate gutter journalist from Berlincould go abroad, to England or America, and publishthe `inside story' of Hitler . Here was the inside story, andnobody bothered to read it .

I believe Strasser's book, containing the account ofthese two conversations, has never been translated ; atany rate it has never appeared in English . If any foreignstatesman, having the interests of his country really atheart, had wished to learn what sort of a man Hitler was,he could have found all he needed here . A statesmanwho had read these pages would not, unless he were in-corrigibly wooden-headed and blind to his country'sinterests, have found himself years later talking about`that eternal tendency to suspect Herr Hitler which un-fortunately only breeds counter-suspicion', or suchliketwaddle .

94

HEIL AND FAREWELLHere he would have found, if he wished to know it, the

true picture of Hitler . A thimblerigger, a three-card-trickster, a mountebank who sought to make his trashywares look genuine by shouting them ever more loudly,as does the ranting cheapjack at the fair, a man withouttruth, honour or loyalty, a third-rank political swindlerdestined through intrigue to be borne to the loftiestheights of power .

His adversary, in those days, was a man who believedin certain things and wished to attain power in Germanyin order to bring them about ; Hitler, as these conversa-tions show, believed in nothing, but thought these certainthings worth professing as a means to attain power, whenhe meant to do something quite different .

The two men are as different as night and day, asthief and honest man, as renegade and patriot. Thegreatest renegades, in all countries, are those who shouttheir patriotism loudest, bawl their national anthemloudest, clamour loudest that they will not sheathe thesword in wars in which they do not fight, cry loudest forthat patriotic conscription which will not conscript them-selves .Hitler, in this understanding of the word, is the

greatest patriot of all time, a worthy crony of those inother countries who sang his praises and propped himup until he could plunge Europe in war again, and then,in their pure patriotism, began chanting `the man is mad,we must finish with him, send the young men away tofinish with him, down with him' .

He deserves, and they deserve, an honoured place inthe Valhalla of such patriots. They are the men who

95

NEMESIS?have made Europe what Europe is, and if you like it, youlike it. If only, one day, we could have just one settlingof accounts with these renegades . If they have their way,they will soon be betraying us again, with and throughGoring.

Such men enabled Hitler, this cesspool-product Hitler,the greatest traitor and renegade that Germany ever had,for years to pose and be accepted as a German patriot, ofall ludicrous things. By similar means, men in Britainwho should be pilloried as renegades are able to pose, notfor years, but for decades, with the halo of a shiningpatriotism encircling their heads .

I shall give long extracts from the two conversationshere because they so clearly illuminate the theme of thisbook, the method by which renegades-called-patriotssucceed ever and again in bringing about war in Europe,and the characters of the two men called Adolf Hitlerand Otto Strasser. For many years after the publicationof these conversations, such is the level of intelligence inEurope, it was possible to present Hitler, because he wasentirely and cynically and avowedly self-seeking andwithout any feeling for the welfare of Germany, as apatriot : Otto Strasser, because he had precisely thisfeeling for the welfare of Germany, and was not self-seeking, and clung to his convictions, as an anti-patriotand `Red' ; to this appalling extent is the public opinionof Europe, and particularly of Britain, slave to themillionaire-owned newspapers whose mission, as it believesin its purblindness, is to inform .

The theme of these two long verbal rencounters is theold, old dispute. Strasser asks quietly again and again,

96

HEIL AND FAREWELLin a dozen different ways, `Are you for Socialism ; do youmean what you say ; have you the ideal of a better socialorder in view ; or are all these only phrases which youuse to catch votes ; is power your only real aim?'

Hitler, in reply, rants, rails, and roars: `I am theanointed of Heaven, you are an intellectual crank' (doyou remember those sergeant-majors whom Otto Strasserso loathes from his recruit days?), `I know what is best,what you say is the purest Marxist-Bolshevist-Liberal-Democratic-Socialist-Communist-Red muck'. (It is notI, but Hitler, who marries the adjective `pure' with`muck' ; he does it continually ; he would .)

These are not direct quotations, but they give the pic-ture. The contest is between a man of convictions, ideals,and logical mind ; and a liar who believes in nothing andis prepared to use any means to counter an argument,crush an adversary, or bring about a war .

On the one side of the table sits a man of clear thoughtand convictions who can pungently put and counter anargument; on the other, a ridiculous tub-thumper, vainas a peacock, who can produce no answer to a directquestion but a string of meaningless catchwords, who isthrown into hysterical paroxysms by any simple interroga-tion, because he knows himself to be a liar, and whoclearly shows that he has no ideals or convictions what-ever, that he is only for the means and leaves the end tolook after itself.

These meetings took place on May 21st and 22nd,193o. The first began with the familiar tirade - Hitler'stechnique never changes, from Otto Strasser in 1930 toKurt von Schuschnigg in 1938 and Sir Nevile Henderson

97

NEMESIS?in 1939 - of shouted reproaches and threats, on accountof the tone taken in the publications of the Kampfverlag,culminating in a demand for the immediate dissolutionof that publishing house, or else . . . But when OttoStrasser rose and quietly said he had come for a discussionand was not prepared to listen to an ultimatum, Hitler,as ever, became calm and friendly, and the talk began .The battle was joined with Hitler's objections to

criticisms made in Strasser's papers about the appoint-ment, by the first National Socialist Minister, Dr . Frick,in Thuringia, of one Schulze-Naumburg to a high post inthe realm of art . Strasser replied that the youngergeneration of artists of National Socialist sympathies heldthis gentleman to represent the wax-flowers-under-a-glass-bowl period in art and had the right to state itsopinion. Hitler's rejoinder began, `Everything you sayproves that you have no idea of art . There is no suchthing as an "older generation" or a "younger genera-tion" in art, there is only art, and particularly Greek-Nordic art'. Strasser interjected another view andmentioned `Chinese and Egyptian art as an expressionof the souls of those peoples' . Hitler answered : `What yousay is the most obsolete Liberalism . There is no suchthing as Chinese or Egyptian art, only Nordic-Greekart . . . .'

The conversation begun on this level remained on thesame level throughout. Hitler's next reproach wasagainst an article which, as he complained, `differen-tiated between the Idea of National Socialism and theFiihrer, and even put the Idea higher than the Fiihrer' .

98

HEIL AND FAREWELLStrasser, while disclaiming any disrespect for Hitler,

said he held precisely that view . A Fuhrer `might be-come ill, or die, or conceivably deviate from the Idea ;but an Idea was of divine origin, and eternal' .

This, said Hitler, was `bombastic nonsense hatchedout at a debating table, and the worst sort of democraticbunkum. The Fuhrer and the Idea were one, and everyNational Socialist must obey the orders of the Fuhrer,who embodied the Idea and alone knew its ultimateaim'.

`That, Herr Hitler,' said Otto Strasser quietly, `is thedoctrine of Rome, and both of Papist and of FascistRome. For me, the Idea is the vital thing, the Idea ofNational Socialism, and my conscience decides when agap appears between Fuhrer and Idea .'

Hitler simply cannot stand this sort of stuff; peoplewho talk like that are for him `intellectual cranks', anda kindly providence alone prevented the meeting frombeing ended by a stroke at this point . But he knew theage-old answer to this one : discipline! `You are talkingrank democracy,' he said, `and this would lead to thebreak-up of our party, which is based on discipline, andI don't intend to have the party destroyed by a few con-ceited scribblers . Do you intend to submit yourself tothis discipline, as your brother does, or not?'

Thus, at a very early stage in an argument that lastedthe best part of two days, Hitler fell back on the age-oldretort of `patriots', of this kidney ; `You have put a ques-tion which I am unable to answer. I must remind youof the necessity for discipline . Yours is not to reasonwhy, yours is to do as I tell you in the unquestioning

99

NEMESIS?belief that I am always right. Where should we be ifyou began to wonder whether I am always right. Thiswould be intolerable . - You might then want to go in adifferent direction, even in a better direction, than theone I want you to go . This is pure Bolshevism . Pure, Irepeat, Bolshevism. Gad, sir, discipline! Only disciplinecan bring you where I want to go .'

Here, again, the resemblance to those encounters withthe parade-ground buffoons of 194, whom OttoStrasser so detests, is striking . `Conceited intellectuals .'`Conceited scribblers .' 'Piano-players to the left, thosewho speak French or English to the right . Now then, theconceited `intellectuals who speak French or English cango and clean the closets .'

Strasser replied that he knew a deal about disciplinefrom the war, and not discipline, but conscience and asense of duty alone had carried him and many otherslike him through the last bitter months . He beggedHitler not to be deluded by the cheap plaudits of thecreatures about him. . . .

Hitler interrupted : `I forbid such defamation of mycollaborators .'

Strasser replied : 'Herr Hitler, we need not try to fooleach other . How few of these collaborators are mentallyable to form their own opinion, and how few even ofthese have the spirit to state it, if it differs from yours .Or do you believe that my brother would be so well-disciplined if he were not financially dependent on you,through his deputy's seat?'Thereupon Hitler invited Strasser to follow his

brother's example and offered him the post of PressI 00

HEIL AND FAREWELLChief of the party if he would come to Munich and workunder his, Hitler's, supervision . Strasser said he couldonly do that if they agreed about the fundamentalprinciples of policy - about the Idea, in fact - and firstan exhaustive discussion of all questions, particularlythose of foreign policy and Socialism, would be necessary ;to that end he woilld be ready to come to Munich for fourweeks and thrash these matters out with Hitler, and withAlfred Rosenberg, whose enmity, as that of the spiritualprompter of the National Socialist Party, he felt keenly .Now came the ultimatum, in the same form that it

later came in the interviews with Chancellor vonSchuschnigg, and President Hacha, and many others .`Proposals of this sort,' said Hitler, `are too late . Mypatience is exhausted.'And he threatened, if Otto Strasser did not give an

immediate decision about the offer for a Press Chief'spost, irrespective of his convictions or the promises of theparty, to expel him and all his associates from the partyand to sever all connection between the party and theKampfverlag. Here was the same method which waslater to be used in annexing countries . Otto Strasser wasthreatened with bankruptcy, but he would be spared ifhe took a bribe . Schuschnigg was threatened with in-vasion, but would himself have been spared if he had`legalized' it by appealing for it .

Strasser answered that Hitler undoubtedly had themeans to carry out his threats, but in doing this hewould confirm Otto Strasser's suspicions, that his realmotive was a fundamental antagonism to the Socialistdoctrine which the Kampfverlag, in accordance with

101

NEMESIS?Hitler's and the party's promises, had preached for fiveyears, and that this was the real reason why Hitlerwished to destroy the Kampfverlag, its publications andits influence over the North German group of theNational Socialist Party : he wished to be rid of it inorder to collaborate with the Right and the reactionaries .

Hitler violently repudiated these insinuations (whichwere, in fact, the truth) . Of course, he was a Socialist, hesaid, but a different kind of Socialist from Otto Strasser .The whole trouble was, that Otto Strasser did not under-stand these things. `I am a far better Socialist, for in-stance, than your wealthy Count Reventlow' (CountReventlow, a former naval officer, was at this time asupporter of Strasser's but afterwards seceded to Hitler) .`Even to-day, I cannot bear to see my chauffeur eatinganything different from myself.'

This was a curious argument, for very few chauffeurswould be likely to covet what Hitler eats . But it showswhat some people understand by Socialism, when theywish to . Hitler continued :`What you mean by Socialism is rank Marxism . The

great bulk of the workers want nothing but bread andcircuses ; they have no use for "ideals" and we can nevercount on winning over large numbers of them .'

To read these words, is to understand the sympathythat Hitler so long enjoyed, indeed until he made thatpact with Bolshevy, among the ruling classes in Britain .They, too, admire Socialism, within limits, and Hitler, inthis answer, precisely defines these limits .

`We want a hand-picked new ruling class,' said Hitler,`one not moved, as you are moved, by love-my-fellow-

I02

HEIL AND FAREWELLman feelings, but one that clearly realizes that its superiorrace gives it the right to rule, and one that will ruthlesslymaintain and ensure this rule over the masses .'

Otto Strasser, with a tenacity that commands respect,repeatedly sought to bring the conversation back to anintelligible level and to get down to an exchange of clearquestions and answers about specific problems .

'Herr Hitler', he said, `I am staggered by these viewsof yours . I hold your racial theories to be entirely false .In my view, the "race" is but the original raw material,and in the case of the German people four or five racescontributed to make this . Political, climatic and otherinfluences, together with pressure from without andassimilation within, made of this mixture a people ; andthe processes of history evolved the third and highestform, that which we call "a nation", which in our casewas born in August 1914 . Your racial theories woulddeny that the German people is a nation. They denythat which I hold to be the task and meaning of the com-ing German revolution .'

Said Hitler : `What you say is pure Liberalism . Thereare no other revolutions but racial revolutions . Thereare no economic, political or social revolutions, there isbut the struggle of the racially inferior lower class againstthe ruling upper race .'

This interesting passage throws a new light on Hitler'stheories. Put this way, his ideas would be universallyacceptable to exploiters the world over, as much to Jewsas to any others . It contains, indeed, no mention what-ever of Jews, this utterance of the year i 93o by the archanti-Semite who so often used Jews as his agents . It is,

I03

NEMESIS?indeed, an entirely new conception of race, evenstranger than that which has currently passed as hisconception of it . It is that the poor are not only a lowerclass but an inferior race ; while the rich, are not only pre-destined to rule, but are also a superior race . This is thebest racial theory ever invented, in my recollection, andif only Hitler had made this clear to the world earlier,and had kept that stupid stuff about the Jews out of theargument, he would, in my opinion, be the adored rulerof Europe to-day. Not even the pact with Bolshevycould have shaken him -if he had propounded thisfascinating doctrine earlier .

`You, Herr Strasser', roared Hitler further, beating thetable with his fists until it danced, `do not understandthese racial matters . Precisely because you lack thisknowledge of race, your foreign policy is so wrong .For instance, you have often spoken openly in favour ofthe so-called Indian freedom movement, although thisis obviously nothing but a rebellion of the inferior Indianraces against the high-quality English-Nordic race . TheNordic race has a right to rule the world and we mustmake this right the guiding star of our foreign policy .'

It is really sad that Otto Strasser's book, containing therecord of these conversations, did not become widelyknown years ago, and that Hitler was thus deprived ofthe honorary memberships of the Simla, Bombay andCalcutta clubs which would inevitably have been con-ferred on him if these lovely words had reached theouter world . In the next sentence he continued in likevein :

`For these reasons, we can never go together with104

HEIL AND FAREWELLSoviet Russia, where a Jewish head rests on Slav-Tartarbody . I know the Slavs from my own homeland .Earlier, when a Germanic head sat on the Slav body,co-operation with Russia was feasible, and Bismarck didthis. To-day it would be simply a crime .'

Otto Strasser replied that he could not understandsuch views in foreign politics. The only thing that wouldcount with him was, whether this or that line in foreignpolicy would benefit or harm Germany ; in the first case,he held it to be the right line, and the State in questioncould be as repugnant to him personally as it wished ; inthe second case, he held it to be the wrong line, withoutregard to the depth of his personal liking for the Stateconcerned and its people .

Germany's most vital aim in foreign policy was, in hisopinion, to throw off the Versailles Treaty, and in thesearch for powers whose course might lie parallel withhers in that direction, for no matter how short a distance,he found only Italy and Russia. For that reason he heldcollaboration with Italy to be wise, though the Italiansdid not attract him, and he even held collaboration withRussia to be theoretically possible, though Bolshevismwas as antipathetic to him as Fascism ; where the interestsof Germany were at stake, M . Stalin and Signor Musso-lini, Mr. MacDonald and M . Poincare were all one tohim.A conversation which had already lasted long and

continually threatened on Hitler's side to degenerateinto an unintelligible babble then continued with aspeech of Hitler's about `the coming Nordic-Germanicrule in Europe' and Strasser asked for it to be interrupted

105

NEMESIS?and continued the next day . Optimist that he is, he alsoasked that it should then be devoted to the question thatparticularly interested him - Socialism, as he under-stood it .

When the two antagonists met the next day, Strassergot his blow in first . He had prepared a lengthy explana-tion of his Socialist views and of the way to apply themin practice, and delivered himself of this, in order to nailHitler to a clear statement of intentions .

'Do you agree with me,' said Strasser to Hitler,'that the overthrow of the existing regime, whichwe are mutually working for, should be a completerevolution in the political, economic and spiritual fields,a revolution which must be brought about and carriedthrough by all methods? That means, that we must beequally implacable and hostile in our attitude towardscapitalism and towards international Marxism. And thisis the main question at issue in our conversation to-day -that our campaign should not be confined to the"struggle against Marxism" but should also be con-ducted as a struggle against Capitalism. But this de-mands clarity under the head, Private Property . Myview is that the principle of "the inviolability of privateproperty" excludes all possibility of German Socialism .It is of course my view that all civilization rests on pro-perty. But precisely because the material circumstancesof a man govern his possibilities of developing hispersonality and evolving a manly and upright bearing,precisely because property is thus the basis of inde-pendence, is it necessary to give those eight-tenths of theGerman people who are to-day without property the

Io6

HEIL AND FAREWELLpossibility of acquiring property . In the capitalistsystem, they lack this possibility .'

`The position to-day,' continued Otto Strasser, `is likethat before the Wars of Liberation. At that time Baronvon Stein wisely said : "If the nation is to achieve free-dom and honour, it will be necessary to give the op-pressed sections of this nation property and the right otco-determination." The oppressed classes were at thattime the landless peasant-serfs . Then the need of the daywas to carry through the liberation of the peasants ;to-day, it is to carry through the liberation of theworkers ; just as the goal was achieved then by giving thepeasants property and the right of co-determination, somust the workers be given property and the right of co-determination now. In agriculture, it was possible to usethe method of individually-held property, because theland is capable of being divided into suitably small por-tions. In our modern industry, that is impossible ; afactory cannot be divided into a lot of small undertakings .In this case, therefore, the method of collective-owner-ship is needed, and the title to this property should beheld in a double right - as a member of the nation, andas a member of the working-community in that particu-lar factory . But just as Baron von Stein had to take partsof their land from the big landowners in order to makethe peasants property-owners - for then, as now, nothingwas lying about ownerless - so must we to-day takefrom the present owners part of their monopoly-propertyand give it to the workers, or in a wider sense to thenation. The property-owners of that day called Baronvon Stein a Jacobin, just as they call us Bolshevists

107

NEMESIS?to-day, but the liberation of Prussia would have been justas impossible without this reform as the liberation ofGermany is to-day without the liberation of the Germanworkers.'

Hitler interrupted, `Your comparison is completelyfalse. You cannot compare the complicated industrialmechanism of to-day with the German peasant-libera-tion. Land can of course be divided up and given toindividuals, but not a modern factory .'

Strasser broke in to say that a great difference inmatters of method of course existed, but his point wasthat the peasant-liberation, that unloosed the mightyforces which made the War of Liberation possible, wouldnot have been possible if the principle of `the inviola-bility of private property' had remained in force .

Hitler asked Strasser how he envisaged his share-outof property in a modern industrialized State, andStrasser answered that he thought the present ownersshould retain 49 per cent of the capital and profits of anundertaking, while the State should receive 41 per centas the representative of the nation, and the workers theremaining io per cent ; but the management of the con-cern, as embodied in the Supervisory Board, should bedivided into equal shares of one-third each among thepresent owners, the State, and the workers, in order thatthe influence of the State in its actual conduct should bereduced .

Thus Otto Strasser, in his opening speech, developed,in broad outline, his theory of a German Socialism,which I shall describe more fully later in this book . It isnot, as this quotation will show, that the present owners

io8

HEIL AND FAREWELLof property in Germany should be brusquely dispossessedin favour of the unpropertied masses ; or that a super-capitalist called The State should be set up in place ofthe body of individual capitalists of to-day ; but that theunpropertied eight-tenths of the German people shouldbe admitted to co-ownership, co-management and co-responsibility .

The result of it all was, inevitably, that Hitler toldStrasser: `What you say is rank Marxism, it is just Bol-shevism. You want to introduce the democratic system,which in politics has left us with a heap of ruins, intoeconomic life and destroy it. You Would undo the wholeprogress that has been made by mankind, which wasalways due to individual great men, to great inventors .'

It is astounding how this man, whose whole stock-in-trade seems to consist of a few phrases culled from thecheaper press of Viennese back streets, was able to dazzleand dominate his kind ; how he was able to answer andannihilate practically any question with one of a dozenwords : `Marxism', `Democracy', `Liberalism', `Intellec-tual', `Scribbler', `Bolshevism', `Discipline' . Hardly anintelligible thought is to be found in his discourse, only afew which are comprehensible, but base .

Strasser answered the one about `the progress of man-kind' with the kind of remark that would spring to thelips of any non-cretin in a sane world. He is not a manto be overborne by phrases, but one who looks for thetruth behind them, and he replied that he questionedthe whole assumption about `the progress of mankind'and by no means admitted `that the invention of thewater closet was a contribution to civilization' .

log

NEMESIS?Hitler, whose every remark could be foretold by a

school child of average intelligence after a six-weeks'correspondence course, answered : `But you will not denythat mankind has undergone a gigantic development,from the Stone Age to the technical marvels of to-day,and that this entire development would be cut off byyour hatched-at-a-writing-desk theories?'

Strasser, who respects the meaning of words, said hedid not believe that mankind had progressed, but ratherthat mankind had remained unchanged for thousands ofyears. He asked mildly if Herr Hitler thought thatGoethe had been mentally backward because he nevertravelled in a motor car, or Napoleon because he neverlistened to the radio?

Hitler answered that these were all 'arm-chair theories,and practical life daily proves the mighty progress ofmankind, which receives its impulse from the achieve-ments of individual great men' . (I once played a game,the winner of which was he who could answer themost questions with some fatuous remark in commondaily use, such as `The days are drawing in, aren'tthey?' Hitler should be a master of this, after a littlepractice .)

The one about the progress of mankind being the workof individual great men, however, let Otto Strasser inagain, and he interjected pointedly that he did notaccept this dogma about the part played by great leaderseither, for man was neither the maker nor the inventor ofhistorical epochs, but the tool of destiny .

Hitler looked at him with that suspicion-laden gazeborn of Vienna back streets and interrupted him sharply .

110

HEIL AND FAREWELLEven at that time Hitler was a master of every trick ofintimidation ; I remember how he tried to stare me downand sat staring at me for two or three minutes withoutopening his lips, when I once went to see him. But inthose days he had not the backing which made intimida-tion so easy later - the biggest army in Europe . Nowhe asked Strasser, with bulging eyes and thunder-ladenbrow :

`Do you wish to insinuate that I am not the inventor ofNational Socialism?'

`Certainly I deny that,' said Strasser . `I see NationalSocialism as an idea born of our times and planted bydestiny in one form or another in hundreds of thousandsof hearts. You have it in an exceptionally sharply de-fined form, but the simultaneity of its appearance, andthe similarity of its form, shows that it is the fruit of ahistorical process . It is the same with the capitalistsystem ; apart from its merits or demerits, it is "old" now,it is in decline, while the time of Socialism is coming andit will determine the history of the next 150 years' .

j`What you call Socialism,' replied Hitler angrily, `is

ust Marxism, and your whole ideas are just papertheories which have nothing to do with real life . Bywhat right do the workers demand a part in ownershipor even in management? Do you think my publisherhere would allow his girl typist to tell him what to do?The employer provides his workers with bread. Our bigindustrialists are not concerned with making as muchmoney as possible, with living as well as they can ;responsibility and power are the things that matter forthem. Their brains have brought them to the top, and

III

NEMESIS?this process of natural selection, which again proves theirsuperior race, gives them a right to lead .'

It is strange now to think that these words, whichwould make any armaments-Croesus, sweated-workshopproprietor, brothel-keeper, bottle-party Levantine, com-pany-promoter, dividend-lizard, or war-profiteer purrwith pleasure, came from a man who succeeded in mak-ing millions of Germans think that he was moved by aburning will to abolish the social evils of our times .I have quoted only parts of these two immense con-

versations, but enough to show their nature. At onepoint Otto Strasser did contrive to transfix Hitler withhis pin and hold him down for a moment. `What wouldyou do, if you came to power in Germany to-morrow?'he said ; `what would you do about Krupps? Wouldeverything remain unchanged in respect of shareholdersand workers, ownership, profits and management?'

`Why, of course,' said Hitler contemptuously . `Do youthink I am mad enough to destroy the economic system?'

`Then, Herr Hitler,' said Otto Strasser, `if you meanto maintain the capitalist system, you should not preachSocialism, for the members of our Party are in the firstplace Socialists and put their faith in the Party pro-gramme, which specifically demands the Socialization ofjointly-owned concerns.' (Point No. 13 of the 25 Points .)

`The term Socialism,' said Hitler loftily, `is bad initself, but in any case the programme does not mean thatsuch concerns must be Socialized, only that they could beSocialized if they acted in a way contrary to the interestsof the nation. If they don't do that, it would be a crimeto destroy the economic system.'

1 1 2

HEIL AND FAREWELLThe conversations dragged on, but did not progress .

Hitler stubbornly rejected all idea of co-ownership andco-management for the workers, and when Otto Strasserrecalled the case of a famous lock-out in which, as hesaid, two or three dozen people, who were no better andno worse than their neighbours, had been able to put250,000 Ruhr workmen on the street', Hitler said, `Idon't need the co-ownership or co-management of theworkers to stop that sort of thing ; a strong State can dothat .'

The most important thing about these encounters withHitler is that Otto Strasser did succeed in obtaining aclear negative in the matter that was vital for him -Socialism. More remarkable still, Hitler on this occasionand in this matter spoke the truth, which is very rare .Three years before he came to power, he was alreadywilling, in such a discussion as this, to abandon all pre-tence in the matter of his Socialist promises and to showhimself as a man of no political principle at all .

After these meetings, Otto Strasser's years of servicein Hitler's Party quickly approached their end . The gapbetween `Idea' and `Fiihrer' had become clear to see .Otto Strasser realized that his place, as he had toldHitler, was with the Idea, at no matter what cost tohimself.

The open breach soon came . Hitler put into practicehis threat to destroy Otto Strasser financially, to makehim bankrupt, and to cast him out . He ordered Goebbelsto get rid of Strasser by hook or by crook, and the littleDoctor called a packed party meeting, which Strasserand his associates were prevented by various devices

I13

NEMESIS?from attending, as rebels . Otto Strasser retaliated witha manifesto, published in his papers throughout NorthGermany, which were still the official organs of NationalSocialism . This was entitled `The Socialists leave theNational Socialist Party' .

A furious onslaught followed . Summoning to his aidhis army of words and phrases, Hitler issued a scathingattack on Strasser, whom he denounced as a `cheapscribbler' and `parlour-Bolshevist' -the sergeant-majortouch again.

Strasser retaliated by publishing, without comment,his official war record, and took this trick, for when thecontest is one of facts, and not of phrases, Hitler must loseevery, time .

Hitler struck again, by expelling Otto Strasser and hisfollowers throughout the country from the party . Onlyone position now remained - the Kampfverlag, whichwas still publishing the newspapers of Hitler's Party .Gregor Strasser had yielded and sold his third-share toHitler ; now, by the offer of a Reichstag seat, Hitler wonover the second partner, Hinkel, who sold out. TheKampfverlag was Hitler's and he promptly closed itdown.

Otto Strasser thus paid in cash also for his convictions,a thing few men do. His third sharee was lost ; at the firstattempt to buy the Kampfverlag, Hitler had offered eachof the partners 8o,ooo marks, at that time ;E4ooo, fortheir share . Strasser was left penniless .

Thus came Otto Strasser's farewell to Hitler, after agood fight, lasting five years, for his Idea . Once againhe had to start at the beginning, to resume his quest for

1 14

HEIL AND FAREWELL`German Socialism' . Hitler had made a bitter enemy .For the first time, a foremost leader of the Party haddefied him and left him rather than compromise .This was the moment when Gregor should have broken

away too, with his brother . But Gregor never couldbring himself to do that . He always thought that Hitlerwas sound at heart, only misguided . He believed thatthe horse `was only bucking' and would return to thecourse, run a straight race . This self-deception cost himhis life; the same self-deception, in other men, costEurope a new war .

Now, Otto Strasser gathered his friends about him andbegan his war against Hitler. It is still going on . Indeed,it is only just approaching its decisive stage . Strasser,seeing that there was neither Revolutionary Socialismnor Socialism of any kind to be hoped for from Hitlerand his Party, set out to corrode that party from within .The time would come, he was convinced, when Germanywould insist on having Socialism, and then he and his menwould take up the heritage that Hitler had mal-administered .

So, with his eye on that future day, Otto Strasserformed his Black Front - a Brown Army within theBrown Army, a Party within the Party, a Gestapo withinthe Gestapo . All those men who were to rule Germanythrough terror now had to look over their own shoulders,to look suspiciously at their own shadows . It was a boldventure, and the Black Front from the beginning workedfor a distant day - the day when Hitler should havecome to power, betrayed his promised Socialism,brought Germany into war, and been overthrown,

''5

CHAPTER 7

BLACK FRONT

JUST ten years have passed, as I write this book in 1940,since the Black Front was founded, and during that timeits name was little known,, and still less understood, inthe world outside Germany.Within Germany it was well known, both before and

after Hitler's triumph, but the tide was running sostrongly in his favour that its struggle was one againstoverwhelming odds . Hitler's fame, and later his power,was growing, and the Black Front, though it carried ona stubborn fight, only attracted, outside Germany,the languid and slightly contemptuous interest withwhich the majority of people always regard fightersfor a lost cause .

Few were then far-sighted enough to perceive that itmight one day be the petard which would blow upHitler. But it was formed of resolute men who wouldnot compromise and clung to their beliefs, at whatevercost. Strasser himself, as I have shown, lost a small for-tune through his stand against Hitler at the Kampfverlag ;his leading associates also lost money, position, libertyand sometimes life .

But the fight never stopped, and neither exile, out-lawry nor even the war itself could completely sever thebond that existed between them . The Black Front existsin Germany to-day, as no other organization exists,

ii6

HERBERT BLANK AND OTTO STRASSER

BLACK FRONTready to spring into action, like an engine at the touchof the starter, when the moment comes . Hitler's star iswaning, and with it National Socialism in the form thathe gave it. The Black Front, the members of whichclaim that they are the real National Socialists, ispreparing for the come-back, and may have the lastlaugh yet.

It began, after the breach with Hitler, on July 4th,193o, as the Kampfgemeinschaft Revolutiondrer National-sozialisten, or Union of Revolutionary National Socialists .Later, after the adhesion of rebellious Nazi Storm Troopsfrom the Berlin district and other sympathetic groups,it became simply The Black Front .

Its chief leaders were Otto Strasser himself, MajorBuchrucker, Herbert Blank, and other well-knownNorth German figures .

Major Buchrucker deserves description, for in him thediscerning reader may find a pointer to the way theBlack Front may in the future re-emerge, and possiblyconquer. A regular officer and fiery patriot, he organizedthe Black Reichswehr, that secret army of 100,000 menwhich was formed, with the connivance of the regularGerman army, after the 1914-18 war, to outwit themilitary restrictions put on Germany by the VersaillesTreaty. In lonely fortresses, in remote country districts,behind the hedges of big East Elbian estates owned bymen who sympathized, this shadow army was raised outof sight of the French, British, Belgian and Italian officerssent to see that Germany respected the Treaty .

It was the first experiment in secret rearmament ; thelast, and greatest, was Goring's secret creation of an

117

NEMESIS?enormous air force between the years 1933 and 1936 .Here the word `Black' appears for the first time ; it hadnothing to do with the colour of the uniforms worn bythis clandestine force, which were not black, but meantsecret. Exactly the same thing applies to the Black Front,and this is important to understand ; it has nothing to dowith the Strasser `Black Guard' afterwards raised, whichactually wore black shirts . Goring's air force, until it wasrevealed, was a black air force .

Major Buchrucker led one of the very earliest Putsches(those post-war attempts of the Nationalists to unseat thedetested Republican Government by force of arms) inGermany - the Kiistrin Putsch of 1922 . It might becalled the first Hitler Putsch . Its aim was to overthrowthe Berlin Government and set up a new regime . Generalvon Seeckt, the head of the regular Reichswehr, knew ofit and was half in sympathy with it, but lost his nerve atthe last moment.

Buchrucker was left alone and the Putsch collapsed .At his trial, he kept silence about the connivance ofthe regular Reichswehr in the formation of the secretReichswehr and received ten years penal servitude, fiveof which he served . His sentence was not commuted,like that of the allegedly persecuted, but actuallyfortunate Hitler .In 1928 he was set free and joined the Strasser Group

of the National Socialist Party. At the breach withHitler, he followed Strasser, and became commanderof the uniformed `Black Guard' . After Hitler's triumphhe was thrown into a concentration camp and kept therefor eighteen months . There he was drilled for weeks at a

Its

BLACK FRONTtime . `Quick march . Halt. About turn. Double. Halt .About turn. Double. Halt . About turn . Double.Halt. Was, du Schwein, du willst ein Major gewesen semiWhat, you swine, you mean to say you were a Major?About turn. Double.' And so on, and so on .

Major Buchrucker was released when conscription wasreintroduced in Germany - and is now a senior staffofficer, with the rank of colonel!I have chosen him to try and show the kind of man

who helped Otto Strasser build his Black Front .Strasser's breach with Hitler and formation of a new

organization made a deep impression on the younger,more urgent and more idealistic National Socialists, andamong the younger generation in general throughoutthe country . The Young German Order of LieutenantArtur Mahraun (who was also put in a concentrationcamp after Hitler's triumph and terribly maltreated, sothat he lost an eye, and now has a little bookshop inBerlin) entered into working collaboration with Strasser .So did the revolutionary peasants of Schleswig-Holstein,under their leader Klaus Hein . So did Richard Schlapke,who had a large following among the National Socialistsof Silesia . So did a coterie of rising young men called theTatkreis, whose foremost figures were Hans Zehrer andFerdinand Fried, author of a most celebrated book calledThe End of Capitalism . (Fried is to-day the right-handman of Hitler's Minister for Agriculture, Darre, whoseHereditary Peasant Holdings Act, drafted by Fried, andother bills represent the solitary attempt to put NationalSocialism into practice .)These men and their movements represented what was

''9

NEMESIS?best in Germany at that time . They all ardently desiredthe liberation of Germany, but also a new social order,and their common fear, which was afterwards vindicated,was that Hitler would betray them in this and, instead ofmaking a new Germany, would simply bring anotherperiod of militarist reaction in the place of the chaotic,licentious, alien-inspired post-war Republic they livedin and detested .

From these men and these groups Strasser made hisBlack Front . But, here again, the significance of the word`Black' must be remembered .

It meant `secret', and precisely for that reason it is notpossible to say just what men and groups were in it then,or are in it now. That will be shown when the momentcomes. Otto Strasser was already working for a distantfuture. The visible organization - The Black Front,The Black Guard, the three weekly papers in Berlin,Breslau and Munich - comprised but a quarter of thewhole. This was the outward and visible structure . Theother three-quarters remained invisible ; at the instruc-tion of Otto Strasser, they remained in the parties ororganizations to which they belonged, in accordance withthe first clause of the Black Front programme, whichstated `The Black Front is a school for the officers andnon-commissioned-officers of the German Revolution' .Strasser deliberately chose this penetration-from-

within, enemy-inside-the-walls system . Through it, hehad his men in all the parties of those days, save theCommunist Party; namely, in the National Socialist,Socialist, Nationalist, Democratic, and other parties .At this very day, months after the outbreak of war,

120

BLACK FRONThis Black Front men are in all existent organizations inGermany, but especially in the Army, the Brown Army,the National Socialist Party, the Labour Front and the SS .

This is only possible because of the `black' method headopted three years before Hitler came to power . Throughit, the members of the Black Front were always anony-mous, apart from the visible structure. For the samereason he never put up candidates at the elections,and thus there was never an open trial of strength ordemonstration of the size of the Black Front and itsappeal .

Otto Strasser and his men never felt that they werecounter-revolutionaries . They held themselves to be thereal revolutionaries . Their whole fear was that Hitlerwould not make a revolution, and they were right . Heonly destroyed i or half-destroyed, leaving it to hitsuccessors to build . Their spiritual community of viewswith him was that they were against the old ; but theywanted something new, which he has never achieved andwhich, as seems clear from the conversations with OttoStrasser in 1930 which I have quoted and from Hitler'sactions since he came to power, he never intended .

Perhaps I can best show the conflict of hopes and fearswhich tormented the mind of idealist young Germans inthose days by describing a strange episode in which bothHitler and Otto Strasser figured .

Soon after he formed his Black Front came the trial,before the Supreme Court of the German Reich atLeipzig in the autumn of 1930, of three young Reichs-wehr officers who were accused of subversive activitiesin the interest of the National Socialist Party . This trial

121

NEMESIS?will long have been forgotten by the majority of people,but a bell will probably tinkle in their memories when Isay that Hitler gave evidence at it and used the phrase`Heads will roll' - when he should come to power .These three young officers - Lieutenant Wendt,

Second Lieutenants Scheringer and Ludin -were typicalof the best kind of German of that period, the sort ofman represented, in a rather older generation, by OttoStrasser . They wanted, ardently, fervently, and aboveall things that Germany should become free and mightyagain, and if need be, by force of arms . But that was notall they wanted . They shared the longing of eight-tenthsof the German people for a new and better and justersocial order, for something which they were ready tocall `Socialism' if it were different from the Socialism ofthe Socialist Party and from the Socialism of Moscow,both of which they intuitively felt to be alien and falseand consequently loathed .These officers had hoped to find what they wanted

in Hitler's National Socialism, they had done what theycould to enlist the sympathies of their comrades and theirmen for that party, and they now stood on trial for thisoffence and Hitler gave evidence on their behalf. Thewhole issue on which a conviction or an acquittal turnedwas, whether Hitler's party was a revolutionary oneor one which sought to achieve power by constitutionalmeans, and he, in maintaining stubbornly that it woulduse only constitutional methods, may have wished to dowhat he could to get the young officers acquitted .

If that was his aim - I doubt it, myself; he was simplyusing `tactics' again - the three lieutenants did not

1 22

BLACK FRONTthank him for it. They had believed in him as a revolu-tionary National Socialist . His bourgeois methods andtactics in the witness-box antagonized them .

Even `Heads will roll' he interpreted, on a questionfrom the Public Prosecutor, not as meaning that hewould work for a violent and revolutionary overthrow ofthe existing regime and thus seize power ; but that hewould take revenge, by `constitutional means', afterachieving power, by `constitutional means' . (This isexactly what happened, incidentally ; the Reichstag firefurnished the `constitutional means' and the brutalitiesdone to political opponents after the seizure of power, aswell as the shooting of several hundred defencelesspersons on June 3oth, 1934, were nothing but the gang-ster's revenge in the coldest of blood, without any traceof white-hot revolutionary fervour or resentment-born-of-the-barricades .)

Thus the three lieutenants went to their fortress partly-disillusioned men, and in the loneliness of their imprison-ment began deeply to study political questions . All threecame from Ulm, in South Germany, and knew little aboutthe North German vendetta. Ludin was sent to Rastadtin Baden ; Scheringer and Wendt to Gollnow, wherethey had the cell once occupied by Major Buchrucker .

Searching their minds and consciences for the politicaltruth, Scheringer and Wendt wrote to Otto Strasser,who did not know them, and asked him to visit themand explain the whole political conflict to them . Hevisited them three times .But just about that time the German Communist

Party sought to make use of the strong patriotic wind1 23

NEMESIS?which was blowing by taking patriotism into their ownprogramme and issuing a manifesto which called, notonly for the social, but also for the `national' liberationof the German people . The young officers thus began towonder if the truth they sought were possibly to befound in the Communist Party, which also strenuouslywooed them in their captivity, and during two of OttoStrasser's visits to them representatives of the executivecommittee of the German Communist Party were alsopresent. The two lieutenants asked Otto Strasser if hewould object to a full debate, and he agreed .

An extraordinary scene this, the struggle for the soulof two German subalterns in the dining-room of aprison. I hope it may give readers some idea of thetormenting conflict which racked- the minds of suchyoung Germans, of their dogged search for hope, for anideal, for a better Germany. This state of mind remains ;it was only chloroformed by Hitler; and soon it willawake again, more turbulent and clamant than ever .

Picture the scene. On one side of the table, half adozen of the leading Communist prisoners and theirspokesman, the emissary from Berlin . On the other,Otto Strasser . Between them, the two lieutenants. Inthe background, prison warders, listening enthralled .

On the first occasion the Communists sent down aJew, Leow, a burly fellow who was commander of theuniformed Communist Storm Troop formations calledThe Red Fighting Front ; after Hitler's triumph, he fledto Moscow and in due course was relieved of furtheranxieties in this world by Stalin. He was a poor debaterand no match for Strasser .

I24,

BLACK FRONTSo the next time the Communists sent down the very

best man they could find, and an astute move this was,for he was a most remarkable figure . Captain BeppoRomer was the Communists' best show-piece . He hadbeen a distinguished German officer in the war ; afterthe war he had been a leader of one of the anti-Red FreeCorps (the Oberland Corps), and in that capacity hadcollaborated with Hitler in the Munich Putsch of 1923 ;and now, in the course of that unending search for anideal, he had gone over to the Communists . (Crediblereports say that he too is now in the Reichswehr againto-day, a thing only explicable by the saying, on revienttoujours a ses premiers amours .)Captain Beppo Romer was no mean antagonist, and a

terrific battle was joined across the deal table in theprison dining-room, with the lieutenants and wardershanging on every word . Otto Strasser violently attackedHitler, but he attacked the Communists even moreviolently. The debate continued for hours, quarter neitherasked nor given .At the end of it, Lieutenant Wendt became Otto

Strasser's man, and the Black Front had its representa-tive in Goilnow Fortress . When he was released, heopenly joined the Black Front and became a member ofthe executive . After Hitler's triumph he was arrestedand no man has ever learned if he is living or dead .Remember that these three young men, who risked

their careers ' for Hitler, played an important part inbringing him to power ; at their trial, the full light ofworld publicity for the first time shone on him ; theparty used them prodigally to make the world believe

I25

NEMESIS?that Hitler had the army with him ; but no more mercywas shown to Wendt than to a mongrel dog . Hitler'smission has always been to destroy good Germans - notJews. Wendt heard the Viennese cheapjack ranting inthe witness-box about `Heads will roll', and didn't like it,because Hitler's conception was not of a clean fight atthe barricades, but of cold-blooded vengeance afterthe achievement of power . But even Wendt cannot havedreamed, that day, that his own head would be amongthose that rolled .

Scheringer was won over by the Communists at first,by an interesting method . Captain Romer told him thathe need not join the Communist Party, but could formhis own 'Scheringer Group', a patriotic-Bolshevistgroup, in loose affiliation with it, and the Communistswould finance a newspaper for him. They wished to usehis name in the struggle against Hitler and Otto Strasseralike .

Scheringer agreed to this, after telling Otto Strasserprivately that he was in sympathy with the Black Frontbut would like to wean away the most useful men fromthe Communists for it . Strasser told him he would failin this, because when the Jewish leaders of the partyperceived his little game they would stop publication ofthe newspaper they were to finance for him . Thisactually happened, and in 1932 Scheringer broke withthe Communists and joined the Black Front . AfterHitler's triumph he too disappeared from the scene,and none knows his whereabouts to-d ay .The third lieutenant, Ludin, may be heard more of

one day. He alone remained a Nazi, and narrowly126

BLACK FRONTescaped death on June Both, 1934, but to-day he standsvery high in the Party and is Storm Troop commanderfor the whole of South-Western Germany, Wurttemberg,Baden, Hesse, the Palatinate, and the Saar .Then Otto Strasser campaigned all over Germany,

north, south, east and west, speaking, organizing, andwriting. He was several times hurt when Storm Troopersattacked his meetings ; Major Buchrucker was knifed atFlensburg .

Strasser then introduced the platform-debate type ofmeeting, challenging Hitler and Goebbels by publicplacard to confront him at any time or place they chose,but this was ignored. He had many stormy platform-battles with the representatives of many parties : withWilli Munzenberg, the Communist leader, in a working-class district of Berlin ; with Kaspar, a later Red FightingFront leader; with Colonel Duesterberg, of the NationalistStahlhelm ; and many others. But the Nazis refused allchallenges and would never appear on a platform in opendebate with the Black Front. They did, however, dotheir best by violence to crush the Black Front - andthey marked down, for future vengeance, all the menwho thus defied them .

Otto Strasser is almost the only one of all those men,his chief known helpers, who escaped death, the con-centration camp, or prison .

For instance, his Black Front Leader for Schleswig-Holstein was a man who had formerly been one of themost popular National Socialist leaders, . Dr. Grantz .Grantz is a small and indomitable man, with thestudent's slashes all over his face -'One of the best

127

NEMESIS?Germans I ever knew,' says Strasser . His fame in theNational Socialist Party was chiefly that he had beenthe hero of a terrific free-fight between Nazis andCommunists at Woehrden, when four Storm Trooperswere killed and thirty injured .

At the burial of these men, Hitler stayed in Grantz'shouse and assured him in his most emotional manner('Mussolini, I shall never forget what you have done forme to-day') that he would never forget etc . etc. andwould repay and reward Dr . Grantz in the Third Reich .In March 1933, immediately after the Reichstag fire,Dr. Grantz was thrown into a concentration camp and isthere now, in 1940 ; he has never had charges preferredagainst him or been tried . Seven years in a concentra-tion camp!But Grantz's spirit is unbroken . In 1937 a fellow-

prisoner from the concentration camp, Sachsenhausen,visited Otto Strasser in Prague and told him of Grantz'smartyrdom . He also described this incident : Thecommandant told Grantz one day that he would remainin the camp as long as he lived . Grantz answered,Jawohl, I shall remain here - but as commandant withyou as prisoner'. He received fourteen days 'hunger-arrest' .

The tale of Otto Strasser's men is a terrible one, evenfor these times, when brutality and suffering havebecome the norm. Dr. Becker, a lawyer who was hisBlack Front Leader for the populous Halle district,has also been in a concentration camp since 1 933,without charge or trial . Dr. Becker, who is also inSachsenhausen, has, in contrast to Dr . Grantz, become

I 28

BLACK FRONTa better-treated prisoner, for the following strangereason . The Prussian SS guard at the camp wasrelieved one day by Bavarian SS men, who insisted onhaving their native Bavarian beer - I said earlier thatbeer is a religion in Bavaria - whereas their prede-cessors had made a contract for the beer supply with aPrussian brewery . An action followed, in which Dr .Becker was put up as advocate for the Bavarian SSmen, and won the case. Since then, his lot has im-proved .

To-day, between six and seven hundred Black Frontmen are in the concentration camps and prisons .Many of them have been there for seven years . Duringthese years, thousands of others were arrested andreleased after serving shorter terms . And all these werebut the known Black Front men .

I have looked forward a little here, to show the thingsthat happened to the men who openly supported OttoStrasser in his fight against Hitler in the years betweenthe split and the Nazi triumph, 1930-1933 . They borethe brunt of the battle, and this glimpse of the futureshows how they paid for their convictions .

But most of them still live, and hold their convictionsstill. Before so very long, they will be free men again .And many others who think like them have always beenfree and even wear the brown shirt .

The conflict itself seriously shook the Hitler Party,which, indeed, came to the verge of an ignominiouscollapse. It was only rescued, and enthroned in power,in the nick of time, by those very forces which OttoStrasser and his men regarded as the worst enemies of the

I 29

NEMESIS?new order for which they fought - big business and biglandlordry.

The conflict reached its height in 1931 and 1932 . In1931 came the second open revolt in the NationalSocialist Party. Captain Stennes, the Brown Armycommander for the whole of North Germany, also couldnot stand Goebbels any longer and broke away, takingmany of his brownshirts with him . He went the way ofOtto Strasser, and joined Otto Strasser and the BlackFront.

I shall have to look into the future again to tell thestory of Captain Stennes to-day . It is another extra-ordinary tale ; these Germans are almost incredible .

He, too, was an officer with a distinguished war recordand subsequently a Free Corps commander .' AfterHitler's triumph, he, too, was arrested, maltreated,sent to a concentration camp and told that he was tobe shot and must dig his own grave . Standing beforethis empty grave, he was executed four times -withblank . cartridges! Later he was released at the mediationof a well-known German general, his former command-ing officer, General Watter, on signing a pledge toleave Germany within twenty-four hours. After a visitto Otto Strasser, in exile, he went to China and is to-daycommander of the bodyguard of Chiang Kai-shek! Ihave used more exclamation marks in this book thanever before, but the things I have to tell seem to deservethem .In 1932 the Black Front was gaining ground and

strength. The Hitler Party was going downhill, andfairly fast. But for the great age of Hindenburg, which

130

BLACK FRONTmade him the senile dupe of intriguers and the credulousvictim of old wives' tales, it probably never would havecome to power .

At the beginning of 1932 one of the first HitleristMinisters ever made, Dr . Franzen in Brunswick, gaveup his post in protest against the reactionary tendenciesof the party, as shown in the Harzburg agreement withAlfred Hugenberg, of big business and big armaments,and Hjalmar Schacht, of big banking.In August came Hitler's rebuff by Hindenburg, who

at that time seems still to have been of clear mind; hegave Hitler a parade-ground dressing-down, and vowedthat he would never make him Chancellor . Goebbels,keenly watching to see which way the cat would jump,wrote in his diary of `deep despondency' in the party ;the financial position he said, was `hopeless, nothing butdebts', and so on . In November came elections andanother blow for the Hitler Party, which lost over2,000,000 votes. `A defeat', wrote Goebbels ; and Hitlerthreatened to commit suicide .

Otto Strasser was fighting the Hitler Party with all hismight, doing his best to precipitate its downfall .Gregor Strasser was in the party, Hitler's chief

lieutenant. From the dark forest into which the GermanRepublic had wandered, only two exits offered, as hesaw. It could take the path of a Socialist revolution,which would lead to something new ; or that of a returnto Prussian militarism, which meant war . Some com-bination of forces had to be found which would givea majority in the motley Parliament, and at this pointthe old, old dilemma appeared : should National

131

NEMESIS?Socialism prove its Socialism and join hands with theSocialists, or should it betray its Socialism and join withthe Nationalists?

The choice was clear . The first way would lead to abetter Germany and to peace ; the second to the dis-appointment of hopes of a better social order and to war .

Gregor Strasser - how Goebbels vilifies his formermaster at this point in his diary - was for the first wayand urged that the National Socialists should follow it .It meant an alliance with the Socialist workers - notwith the Communists, and not with the Socialist Party,but with the socialist-minded workers organized in thetrade unions. Their representative was Leipart, thetrade union leader. General Schleicher, the Chancellorof the day, had avowed himself to be `a social general'and that- meant that the army would play . This meanta Government headed by Gregor Strasser (Hindenburghad said he would never have Hitler), or GeneralSchleicher, and with Leipart, and this was the combina-tion which would have saved Germany .

This coalition is not dead, but only seems dead ; itsghost is now appearing to haunt Hitler .

Goring was Gregor Strasser's great antagonist at thismoment. He was for the second way out - the alliancewith heavy industry and the big landowners which wouldentail the immediate jettisoning of all Socialist and socialideals, and would inevitably concentrate all Germany'sthought on rearmament and militarism and lead to anew Prussian war .These were the two courses between which a choice

had to be made, while Germany's destiny hung in the132

BLACK FRONTbalance. The vital difference between them was the oldone of principles and ideals . The first way meantworking for a definite aim. The second meant workingto get power, without regard for what came after. Thiswas the gap between the two camps, between GregorStrasser and Hermann Goring. Hitler's attitude was`Never mind about what comes afterwards ; let us get thepower, the rest will take care of itself.'He allowed both Gregor Strasser and Goring to

negotiate, Strasser with Schleicher and Leipart, Goringwith Hugenberg and Papen. He approved of bothparallel sets of negotiations . Gregor Strasser's chances ofsuccess were great. The general, Schleicher, and thetrade union leader, Leipart, were in agreement withhim ; a great part of the Hitler Party was for him ;and he was acceptable to Hindenburg, for he was anofficer and normal, while Hitler was a corporal and aclown, and Rohm was homosexual, and all this countedwith an Old Gentleman who had once disparaged Goetheas a man of immoral habits to Max Liebermann, thepainter, and on being reminded, `But, after all, hewrote Faust,' replied, `Yes, that is his only excuse' .Gregor Strasser was twice received by Hindenburg

in these fateful days. Germany, and the peace of Europe,was almost saved .

The real bitterness of Gregor Strasser's tragedy canonly be understood if it be borne in mind that he heardfrom Hindenburg's own lips, at one of these meetings,that the Old Gentleman `would never make theBohemian Corporal Chancellor' (this was. the contemp-tuous term that Hindenburg used for the crossbred,

1 33

NEMESIS?vague-origined Hitler) . Thus his very loyalty to Hitlerdemanded that Gregor Strasser should strive with all hisstrength to achieve office himself and bring about acoalition in which the National Socialists would bepredominant. It would never have occurred to himthat the Old Gentleman would, barely two monthslater, do the very thing he had sworn never to do . Thisis the eternal weakness of an honest man, such as wasGregor Strasser. Having no untruth in himself, heaccepts the word of others, and when they break it, he isundone. Hindenburg, by this means, made it possiblefor Gregor Strasser's enemies in the National SocialistParty to defame him, to Hitler, as a traitor .

The story of those eight weeks in which the fate ofGermany was decided, and Europe doomed again towar, by a few men in Berlin deserves to be told in moredetail . The massacre of Poles and Czechs, the black-out of England, the manning of the Maginot Line, thebattle off Montevideo, the conscription of British youth -all these things, all these woes of to-day, are the childrenof those fateful weeks in Berlin at the turn of the year1932 .Gregor Strasser, in November 1932, went into the

fray with these thoughts in his mind : The Party wasgoing downhill, heading for disaster . The Old Gentle-man had told him he would never make Hitler Chan-cellor. He himself was entirely loyal to Hitler - for thatreason he had not followed his brother Otto at thebreakaway. The country had had a taste of governmentby a little group of reactionaries - Papen and hisCabinet of Barons - and had repeatedly shown, by over-

I34

BLACK FRONTwhelmingly hostile votes, that it loathed this and wasapproaching the point at which it would violently eruptagainst them. How could the National Socialist Party andGermany be saved? Not, thought Gregor Strasser, byalliance with this self-same group . The only alternativewas a coalition between the National Socialist Party andthe masses of the trade-unionist workers,, who must beweaned away from their discredited Socialist leaders,with the benevolent backing of the Reichswehr . Leipartand General Schleicher were willing to collaborate withhim - but not with Hitler - in such a coalition. Theway to save both country and party seemed clear .

Gregor Strasser, as the organizer of the party, knewbetter than any other man the disastrous plight in whichit was (a plight revealed after Hitler's triumph in thediary of Goebbels) . He knew that it was breaking undera load of debt, that it could not face another election -and Germany was having an election about every threemonths at that time - because nobody would even printelectoral placards for it . The time had come, he thought,to save what could be saved .At the end of November, just eight weeks before

Hitler's triumph, General Schleicher brought him toPresident von Hindenburg, who gave his word of honouras a Prussian general that he would never make the`Bohemian Corporal' Chancellor. Gregor Strasser im-mediately reported to Hitler, telling him that theChancellorship was beyond his reach, but might possiblybe obtainable for himself, Gregor Strasser. The Vice-Chancellorship, in a cabinet headed by GeneralSchleicher, could certainly be had .

135

NEMESIS?As Gregor Strasser told him of Hindenburg's pledge

never to make the Bohemian Corporal Chancellor,Hitler interjected that he had different information fromanother source . Strasser, puzzled, informed GeneralSchleicher of this, who expressed great annoyance - andset his private police to watch his predecessor in theChancellorship, the man he had made and unmade, thePuckish Mephistopheles of our unhappy Europe, vonPapen. (The police agents afterwards took a photographof Papen leaving the house, in Cologne, of the bankerSchroeder, where he had just had a talk with Hitlerthat was arranged by the present German ForeignMinister, Joachim von Ribbentrop . This was themeeting at which Papen agreed to recommend Hitlerto Hindenburg for the Chancellorship, on the under-standing that he would remain the prisoner in hiscabinet of a majority of non-Nazi Elder Statesmen noneof whom he would dismiss . Schleicher bitterly reproachedPapen that he had been intriguing with Hitler . Papengave his word of honour as a Prussian officer that he hadnot spoken with Hitler . Schleicher produced the photo-graph . - General Schleicher than proposed the expulsionof Papen from the Count Schlieffen Society (the membersof this body were restricted to the Officers' Corps) on theground that he had given a perjured word . The disci-plinary investigation has never been concluded : theinstigator of it was shot on June 3oth, 1934, as wasGregor Strasser.)

But while Schleicher was trying to defeat the intriguesof Papen, Hitler appeared to be convinced by Strasser'sreport and to be half-ready to accept the solution he

1 36

BLACK FRONTproposed . He made certain conditions - that the party'sdebts should be paid, that the Reichstag should not bedissolved without his sanction, that three other NationalSocialist leaders (Frick, Stohr and Hierl) should enterthe cabinet with Gregor Strasser - and on this basis wasprepared to agree to the Strasser-Schleicher-Leipartcoalition, to the coalition of National Socialists, Reichs-wehr, and Socialist workers . All was ready for thewritten agreement between Hitler, Strasser and theruling Chancellor, Schleicher. On December 7th, 1932,Gregor Strasser, in Berlin, spoke by telephone withHitler in Munich, and Hitler agreed to come to Berlinthe next day to conclude the negotiations .On the morning of December 8th Gregor Strasser

stood on the platform of the Anhalter Station and waitedfor Hitler . The night express from Munich arrived .Hitler's compartment was empty. The conductorexplained why. 'Herr Hitler', he said, `got out atWeimar.'

The reason why he got out was also the reason whythe coalition was never made, why Germany embarkedon a new period of militarism and war, and why . GregorStrasser was later killed . This reason, or rather thesereasons - for their names were Goring and Goebbels -only became clear subsequently, but can be explainednow, in Otto Strasser's words .

At Weimar, Captain Hermann Goring and GauleiterDr. Goebbels had intercepted Hitler's train . They sawthat the formation of the coalition would mean the endof their own ambitions . In a mass coalition reachingfrom Leipart's trade unionists on the left by way of

137

NEMESIS?the Reichswehr to Gregor Strasser's National Socialists onthe right, there would be no place either for a Propa-ganda Minister or for a terrorist .

They travelled by car to Weimar, awakened Hitler,and fetched him from his sleeping-car. The wholething, they told him, was a plot, a plot made by GregorStrasser and Schleicher. It was not true that Hindenburghad pledged himself not to make Hitler Chancellor .Strasser's aim was simply to become Chancellor himself,to keep Hitler on a nose-lead, and if necessary to smashthe party.

Thus enlightened, Hitler came later to Berlin, hurledthe accusations of Goring and Goebbels in Strasser's faceand called him a traitor . Strasser asked if Hitler reallythought him capable of such infamy . Hitler answered,yes. Without a word Gregor Strasser went away, wroteout his resignation from all his offices in the party, andhis wish to continue as `a private soldier' in the NationalSocialist Party, and went off with his family to Bavaria .He was broken-spirited from this moment, and neverappeared in politics again .Meanwhile Papen, intent on the overthrow of his

detested rival Schleicher, went lobbying in Berlin withhis rival proposal for a cabinet in which he should beChancellor, Hitler Vice-Chancellor, Goring his own(Papen's) deputy as Prussian Premier, big-businessHugenberg Minister for Economics . Another word-of-honour (they were cheap) was given about this time -Hitler's word of honour that he would change nothingin the composition of such a cabinet for four years .Hitler on January 30th, the night of his triumph, re-

1 38

BLACK FRONTaffirmed this particular word of honour from the balconyof the Reich Chancery in the Wilhelmstrasse .

Gregor Strasser's disappearance put an end to GeneralSchleicher's hopes of retaining power and savingGermany, though he did not realize this himself. Hecontinued to try and build that coalition, though itsmain prop was gone . He placed too much faith in thefighting spirit, and anti-Nazi fervour, of Leipart's fivemillion organized trade unionists . He announced him-self to the nation by radio as `a social General' onDecember 15th, 1932, and thus strengthened Papen'shand in the negotiations with the big-business group inthe west of Germany and with the big-landlord group inthe east.

Nevertheless, Hitler on that day - six weeks before histriumph - seemed to have not the remotest chance ofattaining power . Goebbels on that very day wrote in hisdiary : `It is high time for us to gain power; for thepresent, however, not the slightest prospect of thatoffers'. Hitler talked of committing suicide, as he hadonce before actually sworn to do-on November 9th,1923, the day of his abortive Putsch in Munich .Just at this juncture came the meeting at Cologne

between Papen and Hitler . The banker Schroeder filledup the bankrupt Nazi treasury, and Goebbels's diarybegan again to take a more optimistic note . Now cameSchleicher's fatal mistake, that helped to cost him hislife .

Schleicher could probably have saved Germany andEurope at that juncture by a bold stroke . The strokehe made was not bold enough. He attacked the most

1 3 9

NEMESIS?powerful and vindictive groups in Germany withoutcovering his rear .

What he did was to release, for the use of the press,material collected by a parliamentary committee ofinvestigation into the misuse of the famous Osthilfe, orEastern Help Fund. To make this matter clear toBritish readers, it is worth while remarking that `Helpfor the Farmers' in Britain usually means financial sub-sidies at the cost of the taxpayer for great landownerswho rent land to farmers. So in Germany, immensesums which had been budgeted as `relief for sufferingagriculture in Eastern Germany' (the Osthilfe) hadactually gone in large part to great landowners who werealready hopelessly indebted to the State and whoseestates were badly run .

These facts had come out in the parliamentary inquirybut had been suppressed until General Schleicherrevealed them. The investigators stated among otherthings that some of the great but bankrupt landownershad `whored, drunk and gambled' away the money theyreceived from the State . (Chancellor Bruning's downfallhad been directly caused by his attempt to foreclose onthese insolvent landlords and use the land for small-holdings . The Hindenburgs, father and son, them-selves belonged to these squires, having been presentedwith a large property by them, and President Hinden-burg had dismissed Bruning on a charge of introducing`Bolshevism' in Germany, on this very account.)

Now Schleicher returned to this self-same, dynamite-laden issue . He thought so to discomfit the embattledforces of reaction by publishing this material in the press

140

BLACK FRONTthat their intrigues against him would be broken, theirfurther opposition to his coalition-making plans neu-tralized. He under-estimated them . He aroused in thema mortal enmity that brought Hitler to power withina fortnight. One of the squires alone, their leadingspokesman, the aged Oldenburg Januschau, had hadrather more than ,030,000 from the fund for the allevia-tion of his distress, and such an attack on his hereditaryprerogatives and perquisites was bound to make himapoplectically angry .

This card that Schleicher held was a strong card, ifplayed properly . It was even the ace of trumps, properlyplayed. But if he meant to play it, he should first, andbefore revealing his intention, have obtained fromPresident Hindenburg power to dissolve the Reichstag,and then he should have arrested the chief intriguers,Papen, Hitler, Oskar von Hindenburg, the leadingJunkers, Goring, and a few others, and have ralliedthe masses of Gregor Strasser's National Socialists and ofLeipart's trade unionists behind him by a manifestoexplaining the reasons for his action .By such means, he might have saved Germany and

Europe - for these insatiable squires were also thehereditary war-makers of Europe . Instead of givingorders to Leipart, he consulted and debated withLeipart - and the German Socialists, like all otherGermans except the little militarist clique, can do nothingwithout a word of command. Leipart's reaction to suchplans was : `What on earth will Herr Bumke say?' Thegood Herr Bumke was at that time President of theConstitutional Court of the Weimar Republic, a tribunal

141

NEMESIS?before which all nice questions of constitutional pro-cedure had to be brought and decided . The awful visionof an enraged and avenging Bumke was enough todestroy the last hope of a right and reasonable policyin Germany .So the end came . At the last moment one last intrigue

succeeded in obtaining' for Hitler, not the Vice-Chancel-lorship, but the Chancellorship itself. This was the story,brought to Hindenburg by an agent of von Papen(Werner von Alvensleben) and supported by Goring;that General Schleicher intended to march on Berlinwith the troops of the Potsdam garrison . After all theother bogies that had been paraded before him -especially that bogy of `Bolshevism on the land'- thisone was enough to stampede the old gentleman who hadbeen presented with an estate and who, eight weeksearlier, had pledged himself never to make the BohemianCorporal Chancellor. He signed the birth-certificate ofHitler's Government, and all was over .

President and Field-Marshal von Hindenburg signed,on the dotted line, the order for the new war, the deathwarrant for thousands, possibly yet millions, of Germans,Spaniards, Czechs, Poles, and, short of a miracle,Britons and Frenchmen .

I have explained these events in some detail becausethey explain much in the life of the two Strassers, inthe death of Gregor, and in the implacable campaignagainst Hitler of his brother Otto .

While Gregor Strasser's last struggle with Hitler forthe soul of the National Socialist Party and of Germanywas in progress, Otto Strasser, Hitler's inveterate enemy,

142

BLACK FRONTstood aside, watched, and did all in his power to thwartHitler. A day or two before Hitler's triumph, he sat in arestaurant Unter den Linden at supper with thatMadame Genevieve Tabouis who to-day writes about thepolitical mysteries of Europe in the French and BritishPress. Madame Tabouis came from General Schleicher.That over-astute, and ill-fated Chancellor, a few hoursbefore his overthrow, had held his clenched fist out forher to see, and said, `I've got Hitler like that' . MadameTabouis told Otto Strasser of this remark, and heanswered, `Well, if Herr Schleicher really has got Hitlerlike that, he had better be quick and crush him, or itwill be too late' .Hitler became Chancellor. Otto Strasser has not the

same unrelenting personal hatred of Hitler that he has ofGoring, Goebbels, and Heydrich . He does not feel thesame bitter loathing of the man to whose destruction hehas consecrated his life. This surprised me at first, but Ithink I understand it now . Strasser regards Hitler as acuriosity, a freak . He cannot take him quite seriously,in spite of everything, and cannot help laughing a littlewhen he looks at him. Hitler is something outsideStrasser's ken .

`A feminine type, with a destructive mission, not aconstructive one,' he says . `Hitler gave the best descrip-tion of himself - a drummer, or showman, and a sleep-walker. Nothing is real or genuine about him . Not eventhe title Fiihrer grew on him ; it is not the product ofany inner impulse or wish of the German people or evenof Hitler himself. It is the result - and this is so typicalof Germany - of an order couched in military language

143

NEMESIS?and signed by an officer, Rohm, who in the later partof 1931 issued this command to the Party : As from theNth, the supreme commander of the SA, and Leaderof the Party, Adolf Hitler, is only to be addressed orreferred to as The Fiihrer .'

Otto Strasser smiled when he told me this and added :`And believe me, Mr. Reed, I know the Germans, andyou must believe me when I say that our revolution, too,will have to be ordered, otherwise the generals and others- I know these people - will ask : "But who will under-take the responsibility?" 'Now, in January 1933, this man Hitler became ruler

of Germany, and everything he has done since then hasjustified the doubts that Otto Strasser felt about him forso many years, Strasser's parting from, and Strasser'swar against him .With that day, the black years began for the two

brothers . Gregor was at first allowed to feel secure inhis chemical works in Berlin . He had left the Partyand took no part in politics . But Hitler still saw in him adangerous rival, particularly in the stormy first half of1934, when dissatisfaction with the achievements, or lackof achievements, of the Hitler Party was rife, and theghost of that old coalition of Strasser National-Socialists,Reichswehr Generals, and Socialist workers, popped itshead up again . For that reason, General Schleicher, andhis wife, were shot in their quiet flat in a pleasant suburb .For that reason, Gregor Strasser was dragged away fromhis midday meal with his family and taken to the SecretPolice headquarters .Otto Strasser has never succeeded in obtaining any

144

HIMMLER AND HEYDRICHPictures, Inc.

BLACK FRONTaccount of his brother's death which he could completelyverify. The version he believes to be true was given tohim by another man who was at the Secret Police head-quarters at the same time. He says that Gregor Strasser,late in the afternoon, was lying on a bench in his cellwhen the fair-haired Heydrich, Himmler's chief assistant,and another man, who is not known, thrust aside thegrating in the door and fired through it with revolvers,missing Strasser, who jumped up and ran into a cornerout of sight of the grating . The two men then openedthe door and fired round it, again missing Strasser, whoran to a third corner. They fired again and hit him, sothat he sank down, still alive but badly hurt . ThenHeydrich entered the cell and dispatched him with abullet in the neck .

But that, again, is a glimpse into the future, for thesake of keeping the threads of this narrative intact, whichis about Otto Strasser, his life, his motives, and par-ticularly the score which he has to settle .

During the three and a half years that elapsed betweenhis breach with Hitler and Hitler's triumph, which beganhis own exile, Otto Strasser, as I have shown, had beenbusy with the construction of his Black Front . Its openactivities I have described - the campaigning up anddown the country, the anti-Hitlerist newspapers, theplatform-debates. The Black Front had its own StormTroop organization, the Black Guard, not to be confusedwith Hitler's SS, which is sometimes also called the BlackGuard because of its black uniform . Strasser's BlackGuard actually wore a black shirt, but the adjectiveBlack, as I repeat, did not refer to this, but to the secret

1 45

NEMESIS?nature of the greater Black Front organization . Thebadge of the Black Front, incidentally, is a sword-and-hammer, crossed .

But these visible activities of the Black Front were theless important back of its work . The vital work was thatindicated by the word Black - secret organization . In allpolitical parties in Germany save the Communists, butparticularly in the National Socialist Party and itsorganizations, Otto Strasser had his followers, who hadbeen carefully instructed not to reveal their allegiance .Their part in his organization, planned against a long-distant future day, was to remain where they were,ostensibly good Nazis, enthusiastic Storm Troopers,ardent SS men, and the like, and to devote theknowledge they acquired by this method to promotingthe ends of the Black Front .

They are still doing this, and much of their work, manyof their exploits, can therefore only be told at a later day .But by this `black' method, Otto Strasser was able,during the years when he worked against Hitler insideGermany and also during those years when he carried onthe war from across the frontiers, to see through doorsand walls, to know of orders and conversations thatwere never meant to be known outside very small Nazicircles .Thus, when he made his escape from Germany, he

had as his chauffeur, for long distances, a senior StormTroop commander in the brown uniform . I have seen aletter written to him, in exile, by one of the leading SScommanders of to-day, a man famous and popular inGermany, and this letter breathes a fierce hatred of

146

BLACK FRONTHitler. I have seen other letters from officers now servingin the Reichswehr .

Through these invisible channels of information, OttoStrasser was able to look into Secret Police headquartersin Berlin itself, to read the report made by a man sent tokill him . He was able to identify other agents of theGestapo who from time to time approached him, underone pretext or another, on a similar mission . He knowsthe contents of his own dossier at Gestapo headquarters .

These invisible supporters inside Germany have, byone means or another, supplied him with the money tocarry on his campaign in exile ; he spent all the moneyhe himself possessed on it, and is, on account of one orother part of his political philosophy, cut off from thenormal sources of financial support upon which Hitler'senemies in exile draw. Those friends in Germany, too,have supplied him with false passports, sheltered hisemissaries. The men he has sent into Germany, to carryout some exploit against Hitler's regime, have done thisat the risk of their lives and without payment .In the course of this book, the reader will become

acquainted with the men who openly helped him - someof them have appeared already - and may judge forhimself their characters, qualities, courage and patriotism .But the legion of his unknown followers, the men insideGermany who are ready when the time comes to stepout of the Brown Shirt or other ranks and avow theirallegiance, is more important .January 3oth, 1933, closed a chapter in Otto Strasser's

story and opened a new one. Another starting-gunsounded .

147

NEMESIS?The bitterest years of his life were beginning . The

man he distrusted and despised had triumphed, wasChancellor of the Reich . His brother was at last dis-illusioned and was soon to die . What was to become ofhim, Otto Strasser, of his Black Front, of his hopes, ofthe German Socialism for which he had laboured sohard .What did the future now hold?

CHAPTER 8

CRAZY ODYSSEY

WrrH Hitler's arrival in the Reich Chancery in Berlinon January 3oth, 1933, and the endless torchlight pro-cession of Storm Troopers between delirious multitudesand past the two lighted windows, at one of which oldHindenburg nodded mandarin-like approval while atthe other Hitler leaned far out in the spotlight, saluting,with these events another period in the life of ourRevolutionary Socialist began the period of pursuitand escape, plot and counterplot, mantrap and elusion,flight and exile, of a one-man-war waged by an outlawfrom across the frontiers against the most powerful manin Europe .

Nothing in Hitler's life is so dramatic as this part ofStrasser's life . It is an astounding story of adventure andhairbreadth escape ; it is just Fenimore Cooper, EdgarWallace, Phillips Oppenheim and all the others cometrue. It suggests that destiny must have something wait-ing, at the end of this road, for the man who has travelledit ; why, otherwise, has destiny always intervened?

On February 4th, 1933, four days after Hitler's triumphOtto Strasser's Black Front newspapers were suppressedthroughout the Reich .

For three weeks longer a false lull lay over Germany .As a precaution, all documents and weapons of theBlack Front were secreted ; plans were made for a second

149

NEMESIS?line of regional, and unknown, leaders throughout thecountry to spring into being, and into inter-communica-tion, if the known leaders were arrested ; and at the head-quarters office of the Black Front in the Wilhelmstrasse -not far from Hitler's Chancery itself- only a telephonistand a couple of Strasser's Black Guards were left .On February 27th, the docile Reichstag burned . Dr.

Goebbels had written prophetically in his diary on thevery morning after the National Socialist triumph :

`We set to work at once . . . . We discuss new measures .In a conference with the Leader we arrange measuresfor combating the Red terror . For the present we shallabstain from direct action . First the Bolshevist attempt ata revolution must burst into flame . At the given momentwe shall strike .'

The Reichstag, as I say, obligingly `burst into flame'four weeks later, on February 27th, was immediatelyproclaimed to be `a Bolshevist attempt at revolution',and the Nazis `struck' - at the enemies of Hitler through-out the country, not only Reds, but also pacifists,Nationalists, Catholics, Democrats, and The BlackFront .On the next morning, February 28th, the Wilhelm-

strasse office of the Black Front was raided and wrecked,the few unfortunate men in it taken away, and all theknown leaders and members of the Black Front through-out the country, some thousands in all, were rounded-upand taken to concentration camps, where, as I havealready explained, some of them still are .

Otto Strasser, on that evening of February 27th, wason his way to the Anhalter Station to take train for his

1 50

CRAZY ODYSSEYhome outside Berlin, when he saw the glow in the sky,asked a taxi-driver what it was, and received the answer,`The Nazis have fired the Reichstag' . He did not gohome, but turned back and spent the night in an hotel ; andin this manner began the fantastic journey which is stillcontinuing to-day, seven years later, and at this momentafter innumerable adventures has brought him to Paris .While the Black Front headquarters in Berlin was

being ransacked and demolished, Otto Strasser was onhis way to a little Thuringian holiday resort which hadalready been chosen as the first secret headquarters insuch an event as this .From there, he issued the following order to his

followers throughout the country : `All members of theBlack Front who are not known as such to the police areimmediately to apply for membership of the Army, theNational Socialist Party, the SA and SS, and to continuetheir political activity in legal guise inside those organiza-tions.' This order became known to the Gestapo, andthe members of the Black Front who were known andhad been arrested underwent a martyrdom in theconcentration camps to force them to betray theirassociates . Corrosive activity from within was the thingthat the Nazis feared more than anything else, becauseit was so difficult to detect .

Thanks to the precautionary selection of these second-line leaders, who were not known to be his men and weretherefore not arrested, Otto Strasser was able from hisquiet Thuringian resort, by means of simple telephonecalls, to keep all the threads of his organization in hishand, to issue orders and receive reports . The Gestapo

'5'

NEMESIS?took some time completely to clamp down the hatchesof their terror, and in these early days local telephonecalls were not tapped .

But after a week, he received an urgent call which toldhim, in a hastily improvised code intelligible to him, thatone of his helpers had broken under manhandling in aconcentration camp and had revealed the approximatelocality of Strasser's hiding-place . This telephonicwarning came from the Gestapo itself! That is, it camefrom one of Strasser's Black Front men who, in obedienceto orders, had remained at his Nazi post .

At this moment, the hand of the Gestapo first touchedOtto Strasser's coat-tails . On receipt of the warning,he fled at once by road to the second secret headquarters,also chosen long in advance, at a village in Bavaria ;the next day, as he subsequently learned, the Gestapoarrived at the Thuringian inn where he had been stayingunder a false name, to arrest him .

Then, at the end of March, he moved to a third secretheadquarters, in West Germany . It was a lonely housein the Teutoburger Forest, and from here he called ameeting of his chief helpers in West Germany, choosingfor the occasion a quiet hamlet on the Steinhuder Lake.When he and his men foregathered there, they found thatsome thirty thousand Storm Troopers had chosen thesame day and place for a Brown Army parade . Withthese throngs of jubilant Brown Shirts all round them,Strasser's four men (one of them himself in the Naziuniform) calmly made their way to the lakeside, dis-cussed the situation, agreed their plans, and parted .

The chase grew hotter, the Gestapo network ever1 52

CRAZY ODYSSEYcloser, and the concentration camps ever fuller . In themiddle of April, Otto Strasser made a dash for his nativeBavaria - with the uniformed Nazi, a senior StormTroop commander, now at the wheel of his car!

They had not been long on the road when they heardbehind them the tara-tara - a sound like the post-coach-man's horn of old - of the Flying Squad, and a police-tender with a Berlin number and a load of SS men drewlevel and overtook them . The brown-shirted StormTrooper at the wheel gave the Nazi salute and 'HeilHitler' ; the black-uniformed SS men in the tender didnot return it, but drove on . `That's funny,' said theSA man to Strasser .A little later, they encountered the tender again,

halted on the road. The SS men, all armed, watchedthem intently as they drove past . 'Herr Doktor', saidStrasser's brown-shirted companion, `I don't like this .I believe they're after you' . (The car was Strasser's own,bearing the number known to be his ; it was an ancientvehicle with a top-speed of fifty miles an hour presented tohim by an admirer . (He had taken the Storm Troop com-mander, one of his Black Front men who had remainedin the Brown Army in accordance with Strasser's orders,with him to disarm suspicion .)

A little further on, and tara-tara sounded again behindthem ; the SS men overhauled and passed them oncemore. This cat-and-mouse game was repeated severaltimes, until Strasser sought to trick the pursuers by turn-ing sharply from the main road and pulling up in themarket-square of a little town, which was crowded withpeople come in from the countryside for a political

153

NEMESIS?meeting. Strasser dashed to the post office to telephonehis wife and tell her of his flight ; when he came out theSS tender was parked next to his own car .

The crowds of people in the market place, as hebelieves, alone prevented a revolver battle at this point .It was getting dark . He drove off, leaving the pursuersout of sight, and told his driver to get the last ounce ofspeed from the car and turn in at the first farm he cameto. Eventually they found one, and swung in, throughthe great double-doors, into the farmyard, quicklyslamming the doors behind them .

A few moments later, they heard again tara-tara, andsaw the beam of a searchlight, as the tender flashed by,raking the countryside with its light to discover thefugitives if they should have left the main road . Theydid not think of stopping to look behind those greatwooden doors . Strasser and his men lay doggo until thelight and tara-tara had died away in the distance, thencame out and, driving without lights and using by-roads,succeeded in reaching the Chiemsee, in Bavaria, theirdestination .Afterwards, through his underground channels of

information, Otto Strasser learned that these SS menhad indeed been after him and had known that he wasin the car . In reporting the failure to arrest him onreturning to Berlin, their leader wrote that `Otto Strasseris known as a violent man who habitually carries amachine-pistol ; for that reason, my plan was to waituntil darkness fell and then blind his oncoming car withthe beam of the searchlight before proceeding to thearrest .'

1 54

CRAZY ODYSSEYFor the last time, Otto Strasser called together his

helpers in Germany - those for the South Germandistricts . They met on the green slopes of the BavarianAlps, within a few hundred yards of the Austrian frontier,and sat, in bathing drawers, with their papers strewnover the rough-hewn table before the Almhutte - oneof those simple Alpine huts where the cowherd or thecowherdess lives during the summer, when the cattlepasture in the high meadows which in winter will besnowbound .

At this fantastic Fihrerbesprechung, or conference ofleaders, within sight of freedom, the hand of the Gestapoagain rested for a moment on Strasser's shoulder.Strasser and three of his chief South German helperswere there ; and two women, his hostess at the lonelyfarmhouse farther down the slope where he was staying,and her servant.

While the nearly naked men were discussing plots andhigh politics at the table, armed SS men appeared -auxiliary frontier guards on patrol - came across, anddemanded to know what they were doing . `Sun-bathingand having a good time with the girls,' said Strasser,desperately anxious to prevent the SS men from examin-ing the papers on the table . `Girls?' said his interlocutor,`I don't see any girls .' `Why, there they are,' said Strasserpointing to where the two women lay, also in sun-bathingcostume, two or three hundred yards away. `And that'syour girl?' asked an SS man suspiciously. `Of courseshe is,' said Strasser, and, raising his voice, `Du, Annerl,komm' her. Come here. Here's a gentleman who wantsto know what I'm doing and won't believe you're my girl .'

1 55

NEMESIS?The respectable married lady who was his hostess

was quickwitted enough not to be startled by the familiarDu and the insinuation, and played her part nobly . TheSS men, obviously suspicious but confused, withdrew andlay down between the four men and the frontier . Thenone of them sounded his Trillerpfeife, the shrill whistlethey carry, and presently, from neighbouring peaks andslopes, came climbing three other SS frontiersmen . Theyall foregathered in a group and stood, watching anddiscussing the four men at the table .

Otto Strasser and his men, feigning nonchalance, satround the table. Never had the beauties of Austriaseemed so superb to them. The situation grew embarrass-ing, when salvation came out of a heaven that had beenbrilliantly blue and had contained only a blazing sun .It clouded over and released a sudden and torrentialdownpour of such force that little rivulets, bearing tinyavalanches of stones with them, in a few moments werecareering down the mountainsides. The SS men stoodtheir ground for a while and then suddenly decided thattheir suspicions were not worth getting so wet for. Theymade off, down the hill. Strasser and his companionsdispersed their various ways, Strasser returning by deviousroutes to his farmhouse .But the game was up . Four days later, on May 9th,

Gregor Strasser, in Berlin, saw the Minister of theInterior, Dr. Frick, who had remained on good termswith him, and learned from him that Goring's men hadwind that Otto Strasser was in the neighbourhood of theChiemsee. He took aeroplane to Munich, sent a warningand a motor car to Otto, in his hide-out, and begged him

156

CRAZY ODYSSEYto flee. Otto, moved by some premonition, felt he couldnot go without seeing his brother. He made his way indisguise to Munich and there met Gregor, whom he wasnever to see again, in the house of a mutual friend whowas also a senior SS commander ; he too retained hisfriendship with the Strassers from the earlier days .

Gregor Strasser, says his brother, was already a brokenman. His part was played out, he could not forget theway he, who had really made the Party, had been vilifiedand thrown outside in the moment of its triumph, andmore, he felt his coming death upon him . He toldOtto: `Goring will shoot us both .' `Or we him, that iscertain,' answered Otto, and he entreated Gregor toaccompany him into exile and resume the struggle fromacross the frontiers . Gregor would not ; he could notbring himself to leave his family and his business .That same night of March 9th, 1933, Otto Strasser

was driven to a place in the Bavarian Alps near theAustrian frontier. About midnight, led by a guide whoknew every inch of the way, he began to climb, alongnarrow and precipitous paths made by the hooves of thechamois. As dawn broke on March loth, 1933, hecrossed the frontier .

In Berlin, an Austrian destitute and neer-do-well wasabsolute master of the Reich . Across the Reich frontiers,at dead of night, a German officer, anti-Red andRevolutionary Socialist made a weary way into Austria .After a twenty-hour march, Otto Strasser came, on

the evening of May loth, 1933, into Kufstein . He wasfree, he had shaken off the pursuers, he could take up thefight . He was wrong in thinking this, for the pursuers

157

NEMESIS?had not been shaken off, but were still close behind himand were for years to stay close behind him . But he didnot know that, and made his way to the new headquartersof his Black Front - Vienna .

In Vienna, the one-man-war was resumed, only threemonths after Hitler's advent to power and the descentof the Gestapo terror on Germany. In February, thenecessary material for the preparation of Otto Strasser'santi-Hitlerist paper had already been sent to Vienna, andfrom the middle of that month onward it appeared thereand was smuggled in thousands of copies into the Reich .This was relatively simple because The Black Front

covered not only Germany, but also Austria, and itsorganization there was still intact . Strasser's followers inAustria helped in the printing of the paper and insmuggling it across the frontier . It was called, in antici-pation of something that afterwards came true, DerSchwarze Sender (The Black or Secret Sender) .

In addition to the paper itself, small-type pamphletson thin paper were prepared, things which could bescrewed into a tiny ball and swallowed, and these weresent across the frontier, 50,000 at a time. They causedmore annoyance to the Nazis there than any other formof attack upon their rule, because the author was a manwho had played a leading part in their own movement,and because he could neither be called Socialist, Com-munist nor Jew .

Very soon, for these reasons, the arm of the Gestaporeached out across the frontier into Austria and againOtto Strasser's coat-tails slithered through its fingers .This is one of the most remarkable of his adventures .

158

CRAZY ODYSSEYBy July 1933 he had been in Vienna for nearly two

months, living with a beautifully forged passport andunder a false name, with a cousin . In these few weeks,with his enormous energy, he had redoubled the anti-Hitlerist campaign of the Black Front from Vienna, andthe flood of pungent literature that was pouring across thefrontiers was seriously worrying the Secret Police in theReich.

At this time, too, as I must interpolate to make thestory clear, the Austrian Nazis, on orders from the Reich,were conducting their first campaign, which ended inthe rising ofJuly 24th, 1934, and the murder of ChancellorDollfuss, to conquer Austria by terrorism . In Viennaparticularly, but also in many parts of the country,bombs were exploding and violent exploits of many kindswere perpetrated ; the people knew that the Nazis werethe authors of these things and the feeling everywherewas of tension and suspense .

On the night of July 4th, 1933, Otto Strasser returnedto Vienna from a visit to Prague, where, with his habitualforesight, he had been surveying the ground in caseAustria should fall to Hitler and the Black Front need toseek yet another secret headquarters . At his dwelling inVienna, all was dark and he found that his key failed, forsome reason, to open the door; nor could he obtain anyanswer to his knocking .

So he went downstairs and knocked-up the porter, whoopened his eyes in surprise when he saw the visitor, andsaid, `But, Herr Muller, the police were here to-day andarrested your landlady' . Strasser, though he was takenaback, did not connect this incident with himself, for he

159

NEMESIS?was convinced that the Viennese police did not know hisreal identity, or even if they did, that he would be the lastman they would seek - for was not the Austria of Dollfussfighting for its life against Hitler? But he asked `How is itthat my key won't open the door?' and was told `Oh, thepolice have sealed the flat' .

`So!' said Strasser, thoughtfully, and after a moment'sindecision went into the street . There doubts overtookhim and he made up his mind to avoid the house for thatnight, at least . The drawback to this was that he hadreturned from Prague with the sum of just one Austrianschilling in his pocket (during all these years, themoney problem was an enemy only less mortal thanHitler) and could not afford a lodging . Though themonth was July, the night was very cold and he had noovercoat, and not even enough money, as he says, to seekthat warmth which the pleasures of the town canprovide .

So he walked about all night, and dawn found himwaiting eagerly for the first cheap coffee-house to open,where for half of that Austrian schilling he could buy acup of coffee, with sugar and whipped cream, and a roll .

At last one opened . The sleepy waiter brought himthe coffee and the roll and, as every well-trained VienneseOber must, the morning paper . Otto Strasser sipped hiscoffee, bit the end off his roll, opened the paper, andsaw written across it, in flaring headlines, the news thatThe Black Front had been identified as the author of thebomb outrages that were going on all over Austria ; thatall the leaders of this criminal organization, seventeenmen and two women, had been arrested during the

I6o

CRAZY ODYSSEYnight; but that the Leader, one Dr. Otto Strasser, hadunfortunately escaped.Otto Strasser was an alarmed and a stupefied man .

He could not, at that time, even guess at an explanation- for was not he, Hitler's arch-enemy, in the anti-Hitlerist Austria of Dollfuss? Why for any_thing's sakeshould he and his men try to destroy this Austria withbombs? The survival of this Austria meant their survival,its life or death was their life or death . What on earthwas the meaning of this ridiculous story? Everybodyknew who was throwing the bombs. For what con-ceivable reason had the anti-Nazi Black Front beensaddled with the blame?

Otto Strasser did not know it then, but at his side inthe frowsy Viennese cafe sat an unseen guest - theGestapo . Its arm was longer than any man would atthat time have believed . The explanation only came ayear later, in July 1934, when the Nazi rising occurred,Chancellor Dollfuss was murdered, and his own Vien-nese Chief of Police, Dr. Steinhausl, was found afterthe suppression of that revolt to have been one of theNazi conspirators. He was sentenced to a long term ofimprisonment, but after Hitler's invasion of Austria wasmade Viennese Chief of Police again .

Thus in Vienna, where he thought himself safe, OttoStrasser only escaped the clutches of the Gestapo by themerest fluke. Hitler's man, Steinhausl, was out to gethim and nearly had got him . If he had been at homethat day, when the police called, Otto Strasser wouldhave been `kidnapped' across the German frontier, orhe would have been in an Austrian prison when Hitler

I6I

NEMESIS?invaded Austria, and in either case he would have beensent to join his brother . Here, again, is one of thereasons why I think that destiny must have somethingin store for this man ; why, otherwise, has destiny so oftenpulled him from beneath the annihilating wheels?

But on that morning Otto Strasser could not evenguess at these things and he was a flabbergasted man,who instinctively felt that he was in danger . He couldnot think what had happened, but his inner voice toldhim to get out, and get out quickly. But how? He had nomoney and did not know a soul in Vienna ; his fewacquaintances had been arrested that night . He hadhalf a schilling, fifty groschen, say sixpence, in hispocket .

He thought, and thought, and at last hit on an ideawhich held out a faint hope. There was one man whomhe knew in Vienna slightly - the man whose secretaryhis cousin and landlady was, a Jewish journalist in theemploy of the Ullstein publishing firm .

To this man's office he went, a long walk right acrossthe city, after a sleepless night and a spoiled breakfast .Giving another false name, he succeeded in gainingadmission .

The man behind the table looked up, and horrifiedsurprise suddenly spread over his face. He sprang up,with hands spread before him as if to ward off someawful apparition, and said `Get out, get out of here, atonce'. `I want a hundred schillings and I'm not goinguntil you give me them,' said Strasser . `But this isblackmail,' expostulated a frightened and excited man,'the police are looking for you. Go away .' `I want a

162

CRAZY ODYSSEYhundred schillings to get to Prague with,' said Strasser,`and if you don't give them to me I shall stay here and bearrested in your office, and you will be arrested too .'

Frightened though he was, says Strasser, the Jew im-mediately recalled that the fare to Prague only costsixty-nine schillings and said so . `But I want somethingfor a taxi and food,' insisted Strasser. `Here,' said theharassed man . `Here you are, take it and go, go quickly .'Strasser took the hundred schillings and said, `I'll giveyou a receipt'. Up came the protesting hands again,`No, no, don't give me a receipt' . `Then I'll send youthe money from Prague.' `Do what you like, send it ornot, but go away from here, go away quickly, and don'tsend me a receipt . Just go away, go away .'

Pushed out of the door, Strasser again found himselfin the street. He was not, as he had thought, a free manin a free land; he was once again a fugitive, and at thattime did not even know why . He only knew that he hadto escape quickly, and that he now had the money forhis fare. He set his face towards the Ring, and thenremembered that he had no clothes whatever but thosehe wore . The others were in his lodging. He decided totake a, taxi, and to drive there . If he saw anythingsuspicious, he would drive past . If not, he would go inand see if a chance existed to get his clothes .

At the house all was quiet. He stopped the taxi, wentin, and rang at the porter's lodge, feeling prickly . Theman came out, looked at him in surprise, and said'Aber, Herr Doktor Strasser!' 'Wieso, Doktor Strasser?'said Strasser, `What do you mean, Doctor Strasser? :'Na, you are Dr. Otto Strasser,' said the man . `So, and

163

NEMESIS?what of it?' said Strasser. The man smiled confidentially .`Don't worry, Herr Doktor,' he said, `Ich bin Sozi, I'm aSocialist. I've got your clothes here, packed in a bag .The police were here again and I told them you had goneaway. They left the flat open and I packed your clothesin case you came back ; it's better for you not to go up .'Only one problem remained, but a stiff one - to get

out of Austria . By this time, Otto Strasser assumed thatthe police had identified him with Herr Muller and hadwarned all frontier stations to watch for a man withsuch a passport. The best chance, he thought, would beto try the tram .

For in the middle of Vienna, in those days, just off themain street, was a tram terminus from which trams ran,straight along the main road, to Bratislava, two hoursaway. Bratislava had once been Pressburg, and hadbeen to Vienna as Windsor to London ; but that was in thedays of Austria-Hungary, and now Pressburg was Brati-slava and lay just across the frontier, in Czechoslovakia .But -the tram still ran . It still said it was going to'Pressburg', but it still ran, and there was very littlesupervision of thee travellers that used it ; many of themwere people who came and went every day . Sometimes,passports were not even examined .

It was a chance . Otto Strasser took it. He walkeddown the Ring, with his bag in his hand, and got on thetram. An hour or two later, he was in Bratislava, inCzechoslovakia. Once again, he had shaken off thepursuit. He was a free man, in a free land. He had noteven been asked to show his passport .Once more the one-man-war had to be begun again

1 64

CRAZY ODYSSEY

at the beginning. He went to Prague . He had one greatadvantage - good friends, in and outside Germany, whohelped with money when they could, and in other ways,particularly in the vital matter of providing him withfalse passports . This time, he acquired the passport of asupporter in Germany whose appearance and descrip-tion approximately resembled his own . This manobtained a photograph of Strasser to substitute for hisown. Unfortunately, it showed Strasser in the BrownShirt of the Storm Troops, and this was undesirable .So the brown shirt was painted out and a white-collarand black-tie painted in ; and the photograph was thenre-photographed ; and the ultimate photograph skilfullysubstituted for that of the original owner of thepassport .

In Prague, where he resumed his Black Front workin the office of a friend, Otto Strasser took lodging withan unsuspecting postman and his family . In spite of theshock he had had in Vienna, he felt perfectly safe inPrague, for the Czechs were a united people . Amongthem were no admirers of Hitler, and it was impossibleto imagine the Police Chief of Prague, or even the lasterrand boy in Prague, being an agent of the Nazis .

He was only left five months in this illusion of security .On the morning of November 25th, 1933, as he lay abed,his corpulent landlady came waddling in, breathless andexcited, exclaiming `Police', and close behind her pressedtwo Czech detectives with levelled revolvers, whoaddressed the sleepy Strasser in harsh and volubleCzech. He asked them to speak German, whereon theyasked him, in that language, if he were Herr Muller -

1 65

NEMESIS?the name he had used in Vienna. He denied this, andthey demanded his passport .Fortunately, he had his beautiful new passport, a

recent one, issued after Hitler's advent to power andbearing the Reich swastika on it . This completelybewildered the two policemen, who repeatedly exclaimedthat Herr Muller must live here, and eventually retired,cursing and puzzled . Strasser's landlady, an enormouslyfat woman, waddled breathlessly back into the room,exclaiming in comic German, `Outside two policemenmore, with revolver, by big motor car, all very cross' .

On this occasion, too, Strasser was more puzzled thanalarmed, for he had on his arrival in Prague immediatelyinformed the authorities of his identity and of the namehe was living under ; as they knew this, he assumed thatsome mistake had been made in the address, and wentoff to sleep again. No Czech policeman, he knew, wouldwant to deliver him up to Hitler .

Later, he strolled along to Police Headquarters to askthe Chief of Police why his officials had made such amistake. On his description of the scene, this officialimmediately answered that some mystery must bepresent, because the Prague police had no motor carswhatever and never used them . Inquiry then revealedthat nothing of the visit was known to the police . Thenit was learned that the waiting motor car, with the fourostensible officials from the Criminal InvestigationDepartment in it, had carried a German number,namely, the IIA of Munich ; that the two officials whohad waited outside had spoken German with the twowho had made the raid; and that one of them had held a

166

CRAZY ODYSSEYgag, or chloroform wad, in his hand, which he threwaway in disgust when no captive was brought . This wasfound in_ the gutter .

This time the Gestapo visited Otto Strasser in his bedand held a revolver under his very nose .

The chain of events was eventually pieced togetherthus : Otto Strasser had evidently been seen and followedto his lodging by someone who knew him and knewthat in Vienna he passed as Muller, and this man hadbetrayed him to the Gestapo. The familiar abduction-across-the-frontier was then planned, but the Gestaponeeded men for this who spoke fluent Czech and couldthus pass themselves off as Czech detectives . To that endthey used Sudeten Germans from the mixed-language belt .

These men spoke perfect Czech - but did not knowStrasser. The possibility that he would by this time haveacquired yet another name and passport had been over-looked, so that the sham agents were completely thrownoff the trail by the production of his new, and seeminglygood, National-Socialist German passport, and assumedthat the informer had made a mistake .

This affair shook Prague badly . For the first time theCzechs realized, in 1933, how near and how daring theenemy was - their enemy, too. Strict precautions weretaken to prevent any further exploits of the same kind .But these precautions were restricted to Prague, and forthis reason another fantastic stroke of the Gestapo againstOtto Strasser and his friends had a bloody end, as I shalltell .

Soon after this, another very remarkable thing hap-pened to Otto Strasser, an adventure the end of

167

NEMESIS?which has not yet come, and which may eventuallydovetail into the mysterious affair of the bomb explosionwhich occurred at Munich after the present war hadbegun.About the turn of the year 1934, soon after the

attempted abduction by the sham Czech detectives, aman called on Otto Strasser in Prague in whom he wasastonished to recognize one Constantin, who had formany years been a member of his Black Front .

`Why, how on earth did you contrive to miss beingsent to a concentration camp?' asked Strasser .`They offered me ten thousand marks and a high

post in the SA, if I could succeed in killing you,' saidConstantin, and gravely handed Strasser a phial, adding`This is the poison' .

Otto Strasser says that Constantin, whom he regardedas a loyal helper, had had a few drinks, so that hewondered if the man knew just what he was saying .To be on the safe side, he went with Constantin, later,to the political police in Prague, with whom he remainedin close touch throughout his stay there, and had thecontents of the phial examined . `It was prussic acid,' hesays, `and enough to poison a regiment .'Constantin then explained further that the Gestapo

had told him Strasser would be sure to invite him to ameal and he should pour the poison in Strasser's beer orcoffee . `I thought the best thing to do was to agree tocome to Prague, so that I could see you, and I guessedthat you would find a way to get me out of this, for Ishall have to have some plausible excuse for returningwithout having killed you .'

168

CRAZY ODYSSEYThis was easily arranged. The phial was given back

to Constantin and he was supplied with an order ofexpulsion from Czechoslovakia so worded that heappeared to have been detained at the frontier and neverto have been allowed as far as Prague . With this in hispossession, he went off and from that day to this OttoStrasser has never heard another word of him .

Nevertheless, there was a sequel, and a strange one .A former inmate of the Oranienburg concentrationcamp, now in France, saw in the press in November1939, the pictures, issued by the Gestapo, of the myster-ious man 'Georg Elser' who is supposed to have plantedthe bomb in the Burgerbraukeller at Munich and wasalleged by the Gestapo to have been the tool, in thisact, of Otto Strasser and the British Secret Service .This man claimed to recognize in the pictures of 'GeorgElser' one Constantin, whom he had known at Oranien-burg. Constantin, he said, was one of the better-treatedprisoners in the camp and told him one day that he hadbeen sent to Oranienburg by the Gestapo as punishmentfor his failure in a mission entrusted to him . Thismission - as Constantin told his fellow-prisoner - wasto go to Prague, to gain the confidence of Strasser, andto find out what relations Strasser entertained with theCzechoslovak Government .

If this is true, the man 'Georg Elser' is thus none otherthan that Constantin who went to Prague, and thehanding-over of the poison was actually but anothertrick to get inside Strasser's guard . And if that is thecase, `George Elsers already stands revealed as an agentof the Gestapo. Unfortunately the chain cannot be quite

169

NEMESIS?completed . The missing link in it is that Otto Strassereither does not recognize, or will not admit that herecognizes, Constantin in the picture of 'Georg Elser' .`I am unable to recognize Constantin in these photo-graphs,' he says, `but then they do not resemble eachother. They give me the impression that either the manin the pictures has been made up - he might be wearinga wig, for instance - or that the photographs have beentouched up. I cannot recognize anybody ; but with theGestapo, you never know .'

So there is an episode in Otto Strasser's tale of strangeadventure that has already had one sequel, and may yethave a second sequel.

In Prague, Otto Strasser continued to work hard athis anti-Hitlerist campaign . His energy is hard tobelieve. During these crowded years he somehow foundtime to write several books, which I shall describe later .Some of them are of much interest, and I wonder thatnone has yet been translated into English . All this time,the production of miniature anti-Hitlerist newspapers,of pamphlets and letters, was going on apace . FromCzechoslovakia, as from Austria, they were smuggledin large quantities into the Reich, by reckless men whoused the most audacious methods, who continuallyrisked, and on several occasions lost their lives, for noother payment than the hope of contributing to the endof Hitler.

Germans, Sudeten-Germans, and even Czechs, helpedin the work. They crossed the frontiers by secret pathsat mid of night with knapsacks on their backs containingthousands of these anti-Hitlerist flimsies, already con-

170

THREE SPECIMENS OF THE MINIATURE ANTI-HITLERIST NEWSPAPERSPRINTED ON FLIMSY PAPER BY OTTO STRASSER AND

SMUGGLED INTO GERMANY

CRAZY ODYSSEYtained in envelopes stamped, with German stamps,ready for posting . When they reached Leipzig orDresden, and had posted their burdens at some mainpost office, they would buy enough stamps for the nextconsignment and return for more .-Once, Otto Strasser had an envelope of the German

Medical Association sent to him in Prague and hadfifty thousand facsimiles made there. These he filledwith his leaflets, leaving the flap unstuck, and postedthem, in Germany, as printed matter! On anotheroccasion, he had the letterheads of the German JuristsAssociation similarly copied ; but that piously Hitleristbody must have had a shock when it learned of theliterature that was being distributed in Germany onpaper bearing its imprint .

Another method used by Otto Strasser in his one-man-war was to smuggle into Germany, and into the hands ofhis supporters there, millions of glued, stick-on labels,rather bigger than an ordinary postage stamp . Thesebore the sword-and-hammer badge of the Black Frontand some such legend as `The Black Front will oust

1 This buying of German postage stamps, which had to be smuggled back toOtto Strasser in Prague and used for stamping new consignments of postalpropaganda, which in their turn had to be smuggled into Germany and postedthere, was in itself a most dangerous undertaking, for the Secret Police weredoing their utmost to trace the source of the leaflets, and had probably instructedthe post offices to keep a watch on anyone buying large quantities of stamps .

This very danger, as it is interesting to recall, caused the British authorities,in the 1914-rgt8 war, to forge German, Austrian and Bavarian stamps, so thatthe agents who carried the British propaganda leaflets across neutral frontiersfor posting inside the enemy countries should not need to endanger their livesby buying large quantities of stamps at the post offices . These `propagandaforgeries' were apparently never actually used, because the war ended just whenthey were ready, and for that reason none bearing a postmark has ever beendiscovered . But unused specimens found their way through undergroundchannels to the stamp-dealing market and are to-day sought by collectors .

I7'

NEMESIS?Hitler' . One of them is reproduced on this page . Thesewere pasted all over Germany - on doors, walls, win-dows, trains, trams, pavements, hoardings, NationalSocialist Party offices, Brown Shirt headquarters, mili-tary barracks and the like . It was so simple to hold onein the palm of the hand and swiftly stick it on in passingthat it was almost impossible to catch the distributors ofthese stamps, which sometimes appeared in the most un-expected places - for instance, on the desks of Nazileaders and the like .

W KR~4/aeli, ]/i/fi~

At the beginning of March 1934, the shadow of theGestapo fell across Strasser's path again . He gave a lectureon National Socialism at Prague University, which waswidely reported, and the next day received the visit ofa well-dressed Dutch gentleman, one Mr. Frank, who infaulty German, interspersed with Dutch and Englishwords expressed his admiration of the lecture and offeredStrasser, on behalf of an `American anti-Nazi organiza-tion' which he did not name, his financial support . Hewas accompanied - this is a particularly interesting ex-ample of the ingenuity of Gestapo methods -by aJewish lawyer of Prague, Dr. Soundso, to whose sister he

172

CRAZY ODYSSEYwas said to be engaged . The use of Jewish agents by theGestapo is a chapter to itself, and one of the most interest-ing, in that dark story .Mr. Frank offered, without any conditions, to pay for

five thousand copies of each number of Otto Strasser'sweekly paper, which was being smuggled into Germanyin the manner I have described, for a period of threemonths, in token of his sympathy with the cause ; thegenuineness of this sympathy was subtly underlined bythe presence of his Jewish friend . The money was paidon the spot. (At the end of this episode, Otto Strasserwas thus the richer by some 6o,ooo Czech crowns ofGestapo money, which had gone to swell the floods ofanti-Hitlerist propaganda that was crossing the frontier,and this is his happiest memory of the one-man-war .)At the end of the three months Mr . Frank appeared in

Prague again, with a pressing invitation to Strasser tocome to Paris and there meet Mr. Frank's `chief', inthe middle of June 1934. In the meantime Strasser hadasked the Prague police about both Mr . Frank and hisJewish lawyer, and been told that nothing was known ofMr. Frank save that he had a good British passport,while the Jewish faith of his companion, Dr . Soundso,seemed to speak for Mr . Frank's good faith .

On this, Strasser went to Paris, and met Mr . Frank,who said that his `chief' had unfortunately had to go toSaarbri cken (in the Saar Territory, not at that timereunited with Germany) to meet Konrad Heiden (theanti-Hitlerist writer) and would await Strasser there .This seemed plausible, for Heiden lived there and ananti-Hitler-Chief might well desire to meet him .

1 73

NEMESIS?So Strasser agreed to go to Saarbrucken, but without

telling Mr. Frank that he knew Konrad Heiden well ; onarrival he visited that writer and learned that he hadnever heard of Mr. Frank, of the anti-Hitler organiza-tion, or of his `chief' . Strasser then went on to keep hisappointment with Mr . Frank, but, having been madesuspicious, he noticed with still greater suspicion thatbetween twenty and thirty SS men, whom his experteye at once recognized by their high boots, their huskyappearance, and their general behaviour, were standingabout before the hotel . He was made still furthersuspicious by the manner of Mr. Frank, who was in astate of extreme nervousness, and continually left theroom `to telephone', although the room had a telephone .The fact that the German frontier was but ten minutesdistant recurred forcibly to Strasser at this point, and thebeauties of Saarbrucken, as the beauties of Austria oh aformer occasion, suddenly appeared stupendous to him .

He had to think quickly and find a way out of a trap .Telling Mr. Frank that he would gladly wait for the`chief', who still had not appeared, but must first post-pone a meeting which he had previously arranged, heleft the room, disarming any suspicion on Mr. Frank'spart by leaving his trunk behind . Then he walkedcalmly down the stairs, through the surprised SS menoutside, and drove away in a taxi .But Mr. Frank was persistent, and at the beginning of

the next month, July 1934, appeared in Prague againand overwhelmed Strasser with reproaches for his deser-tion at Saarbrucken . He invited him forthwith to accom-pany him in a special aeroplane to London, and Strasser,

1 74

CRAZY ODYSSEYwith a broad smile, declined . On this Mr. Frank said :`If you don't trust me, I am willing for your friend Dr.Hebrew to pilot the aeroplane' .This was another most illuminating example of

Gestapo methods . Dr. Hebrew, a qualified pilot, wasanother Jew, the son of the proprietor of a big store inthe Leipzigerstrasse in Berlin . He was in Prague as `afugitive from Hitlerist oppression' and had there met aschool friend of his, one Franke, who was a collaboratorwith Strasser . By this means, he had come to knowStrasser, who finds the Streicher-Sturmer form of anti-Semitism, as practised in Hitler's Germany, as stupid as itis repugnant, but in the Fourth Reich he dreams of wouldretain, in dignified form, measures of restriction againstthe excessive spread of Jewish influence . Dr. Hebrew hadpresented himself to Strasser as a violently resentful`victim of Hitlerist persecution' .Put a little off his guard, once more, by this

apparent earnest of good faith - for Dr. Hebrew seemedabove suspicion in his anti-Hitlerism - Strasser never-theless telephoned the Chief of Police for an interviewbefore making a decision . Dr. Hebrew overheard thistelephone conversation, and when the police went toarrest Mr. Frank he was flown. Thereon Dr. Hebrew wasarrested and the whole plot came to light. Mr. Frank(whose secretary was also arrested) was actually Dr .Wenzel Heindl, the head of the anti-Black Front sectionof the Gestapo. The abduction of Strasser at Saar-briicken had only failed through the potential victim'sawakened suspicions.

The most interesting figure in this episode was that of1 75

NEMESIS?Dr. Hebrew, who eventually confessed that he had beenpromised `rehabilitation as an Aryan' for his part in theplot. On this bait, he bit . He was to have piloted theaeroplane, with Strasser and Mr . Frank in it, and to havelanded in Germany. He received a long sentence of im-prisonment from the Czechs, but afterwards became againa Gestapo agent and was last heard of in Copenhagen .The sympathy which this type of man can claim, and

usually enjoy, as a Jew, puts him among the mostdangerous of Gestapo agents . Strasser, strangely, bearshim no mortal illwill . But Strasser's hatreds are notquite clear to me . Although his war is against Hitler,his personal hatred is less for Hitler than for Goring,whom he regards as the murderer of his brother ;Heydrich, the blond assistant of Heinrich Himmler,whom he believes to have been the actual gunman ; andGoebbels, in whom he sees the traitor who was chieflyresponsible for the defeat of the Strassers in the strugglefor the soul of the National Socialist Party .

But the upshot of it all was that the Gestapo, oncemore, had Otto Strasser in its hands and let him slipthrough its fingers, and that he chortles to-day at thethought of those 6o,ooo Czech crowns .Now came the most dramatic of all the acts in this

vendetta of one man against a nation . It is a story thatdeserves a book or a play to itself.

A lonely inn, with a river flowing by . A lonely exile,fighting the men who outlawed him with the weaponsof modern science . Avengers, with revolvers in theirhands. The decoy, the beautiful blonde - incredible,but she was blonde and most beautiful . The trap, the

176

GOEBBELS AND GORINGPictures, Inc.

CRAZY ODYSSEYexchange of shots, the dying blonde and the dying exile .The startled, cowed innkeeper . The stampeding feet ofthe fugitive gunmen . The staunching of the blonde's bloodin the river near by . The hurtling getaway in a fastmotor car. The dash across the frontier .

Does it not all sound too bad to be true? And yet it allhappened, just like that, the most fantastic thing in allthis crazy Odyssey . This story, alone, justifies thiswhole book, if nothing else does . When I heard it, I hadto write it. I cannot think why anybody can be botheredto read detective stories, when the world about us offerssuch things. Believe it or not, but I once knew a writer,a first-class writer, who was given a contract to write aseries of short stories for a periodical read by masses ofEnglish people, and though he needed the money badlyhe had to send back the contract because his stories wererequired to conform to these rules, and this side of thegrave he couldn't do it : `They should be about pleasantlikeable people ; they should have plenty of action ; theyshould tell of passion without sex ; they should have ametropolitan setting; and remember that this magazineis much read at Eton and Harrow .'

Can you beat it? What sort of story fits into this frame?One about a castrated Don Juan dashing along Picca-dilly with a Glamour Girl in a racing motor car and anold school tie, I suppose . And in a world where suchthings happen as the story I have now to tell! Listen tothe story of Zahoii - pronounced, if I may dangerouslyair my little knowledge, Zahorzhi .In the autumn of 1934, when Mr . Frank had with-

drawn from the chase, the name of Otto Strasser's news-177

NEMESIS?paper, The Secret Sender, came true . He built secretly, andsecretly operated, a Secret Sender .

At this present moment, when we are at war, this hasbecome a commonplace . The Governments have millionsto spend . From dozens of stations, every night, comevoices, to which the Reich Germans eagerly listen, tellingthe tale of Hitler's crimes .

When I was in Paris, talking with Otto Strasser aboutthis very book, the air was fouled every night by some-thing called Der Freiheitssender - The Freedom Sender, orLiberty Radio. This dishonest fake pretended to beoperating from within Germany . Every night you couldhear the speaker telling how the Gestapo were close be-hind him, but to-morrow, no matter what the Gestapodid, he would pop up in Cologne, or in Hamburg, or inBreslau, or somewhere else . And anybody who cares to,and has not been in Germany, may believe this, if he becredulous enough . To anybody who knows Germany,and the closeness of the Gestapo net, the thing is farcical .Liberty Radio, when I was in Paris, was operating fromParis, and the Germans must have laughed themselvesinto fits when they heard it .

But for one man, poor, hunted and friendless, in 1 934,to build and operate a Secret Sender, only a few milesfrom the borders of the Reich itself - that was a feat, ifyou like. This was the first Secret Sender, and the onlySecret Sender that ever deserved the name, for it wasoperated by real men who risked their lives, as one ofthem lost his life, not by cosmopolitan buffoons workingin the safety of a distant capital .

This was the greatest achievement of Otto Strasser inI78

CRAZY ODYSSEYhis one-man-war against Hitler. It was not his ownachievement alone ; it was only made possible by the skillof another brave man, Rudolf Formis, his close friendand one of the best radio engineers Germany ever had .

Formis, a small, dauntless man, did brilliant servicewith the Germans in Palestine in the World War0914-18) . He held a diploma for having built the firstwireless reception apparatus ever used in Germany, andwas the author of many inventions used by the Germanradio, particularly the short-wave radio, to-day .

His exceptional skill brought him to high office in theGerman radio organization, at last to the post of chiefengineer for the Stuttgart Sender . In this post, he per-formed audacious exploits which made his name knownthroughout Germany. One of the earliest members ofthe Black Front,'he demonstrated his contempt of Hitler,when Hitler became Chancellor, by cutting the cableduring the transmission of an important speech of Hitlerat Stuttgart. The entire Gestapo buzzed with feverishactivity after this incident, but the culprit was neverfound. But when a series of `technical defects' occurredduring the transmission of Hitler's speeches from Stutt-gart, Formis was dismissed and arrested . Luck enabledhim to escape, and his crazy Odyssey began . It led him,by way of Austria, Turkey and Hungary, to his friendOtto Strasser in Prague . In Rudolf Formis, I commendyou again to a German of the type that ought to be atthe top in Germany ; then, all might be well .

The result of this reunion in Prague was that in theautumn of 1934 Heinrich Himmler, the Gestapo chief,and his assistant Heydrich, an unusually handsome and

179

NEMESIS?revolting mass-murderer, called the senior officials of theGestapo together and told them that The Black . FrontSender, which for some time past had been dinninghatred of Hitler into the ears of millions of enchantedGermans, must at all costs be found and destroyed .This was Formis's work. He had given Strasser the

idea of a 'radio-war' against Hitler, and planned it indetail. The main obstacle was the want of money . TheBlack Front was a purely German organization, withoutthe normal, usually Jewish, sources - of financial supportwhich are open to all other, internationally-affiliated,anti-Hitlerist organizations . But somehow these two menmanaged to smuggle funds from their friends in Ger-many, in spite of the stringent German supervision, andthe work began .

The most important thing was the choice of a site forthe Sender. It had to be technically suitable, for trans-missions, and yet secret - secret from the Czechauthorities, secret from the Gestapo. At last, Strasserand Formis found, about forty miles south-west ofPrague, in the valley of the Moldau, that river which insuch beauty runs through Prague itself, a lonely week-end inn, bearing the lovely name of Zahoii. `Behind thehills'! It was ideal . The owner did not bother himselfovermuch with the strange activities of his new, and per-manent, guests . He was a good Czech patriot, anyway ;he died, afterwards. Autumn was taking all his otherguests away; the valley grew chill . The spot was ideallylonely; br rather, that fatal loneliness then seemed ideal .

In this secluded spot, Rudolf Formis, German officer,patriot and anti-Hitlerist, built his Secret Sender . It was,

180

CRAZY ODYSSEYas experts tell me, a technical marvel, and is - or at anyrate was, until Hitler invaded Prague and I left Prague -one of the chief exhibits of the Czechoslovak PostalMuseum. It was something entirely new. From thisSender, the news and views of The Black Front were de-livered three times daily, in three transmissions of anhour each, into the heart of Hitlerist Germany. TheSender was cunningly built into the rafters of the loft ofthe little inn ; in Formis's bedroom, only the microphonewas to be seen. He could lie abed and open his heart tohis fellow-Germans .

Neither Strasser nor Formis, after all they had beenthrough, could have forgotten the danger they were in,or have gone in a sense of false security. They knew thattheir lives were at stake . And nevertheless - the Gestapofound them and struck. The real culprit, as Otto Strassersays, was their chronic need of money, which harassedand hampered them at every move . Formis went armed,and whenever the monetary position allowed, an armedcompanion went out to Zahoh to stay with him, but thatwas seldom, and Strasser had to be in Prague .

Strasser's opinion is that the second armed companionwould have saved Formis. My own opinion is that eventhe second armed companion, if he had been there,might not have saved Formis . These beautiful blondes!But perhaps I am wrong . Indeed, on second thoughts Ithink I am. What a tragedy .

On January i 6th, 1935, Strasser was at Zahori, andsaw Formis for the last time. He brought him newgramophone records of recorded speeches to the Germanpeople; these were changed every month .

I8I

NEMESIS?He also asked Formis if he had noticed anything

suspicious . Formis answered that on the previous day,January 15th, a German couple, a pair of lovers, hadbeen there, one Hans Muller, a business man from Kiel,and one Edith Kersbach, who was a games-teacher fromBerlin and an exceptionally beautiful girl with goldenhair .

Strasser immediately told Formis that he `didn't likethe sound of it', and advised him to have the innkeeperask the police to check their papers and have a look atthem. But Formis said he thought them to have been`nice, harmless people' .

Consider that, `nice, harmless people' . It is not strangethat a man who has knocked about the world, and foughtin Palestine, who has learned about women from 'er inthis country and that, and who knows that the Gestapois close behind him and is merciless, is it not strange thatsuch a man should be immediately blinded and bereft ofall his senses and all his caution, and despoiled of hisvery life, by some nitwit of a blonde who comes alongand smiles challengingly at him and allows her hand art-lessly to rest a moment on his arm and her thigh to rubagainst his and has cold murder in her heart for a manshe has never seen before and is saying by signs to someother man, this is the man you want, go on, kill him, allprobably because she likes some other, third man - ugh,these lice. But happily, she paid .

Because Formis did not tell Strasser - perhaps he hadforgotten it, or perhaps he held it to be unimportant, ormaybe he did not want Strasser to think that he hadlooked upon the blonde and lo, she was good - that on

182

CRAZY ODYSSEYthe day before she had pretended to be cross with herlover, and had snuggled up to Formis, and said `Let's bephotographed together and make this grumpy fellowjealous' . Whereon Formis and the blonde were photo-graphed together, arm-in-arm, by the smiling, attentivewaiter, and the next day, as was later ascertained, thegrumpy Hans Muller flew to Berlin with the photographto make sure that Formis was the right man, and theGestapo examined the picture and said, `Yes, this is theman we want, go on, get him' .

(You may be wondering how the Gestapo knew whereto look and whom to seek . It is simple . The good Dr.Hebrew, who had been promised `rehabilitation as anAryan', told them .)

So Hans Muller of the Gestapo, accompanied now by afriend, whose passport-name was Gerhard Schubert,also of the Gestapo, took aeroplane back to Prague, andwith the beautiful Edith the three - this was also sub-sequently ascertained - had a gay time in the bars ofPrague, and this is only just, because Edith's gay life wasto be a short one . On January 21st they stayed the nightat Stechovice, not far from Zahori, and had their fastMercedes car overhauled, and then they were all set .

On January 23rd, Edith and her Hans Muller returnedto Zahori. They were received with cautious reserve bythe innkeeper and Rudolf Formis, who had been put onhis guard, but not enough - this was the father andmother of all blondes - by Strasser .

It was late. Neither the innkeeper nor the local policehad a telephone, so that the police check-up recom-mended by Strasser could not take place that night . It

1 83

NEMESIS?would not have yielded much result, anyway ; the pass-ports of these three were as good as platinum.Hans Muller, moreover, was terribly tired and had a

terrible headache, and went immediately to bed . In thepicture of the hotel, reproduced opposite, you will seethe layout. His bedroom, which was also that of Edith,was on the first floor; two doors beyond it was Formis'sroom.

Formis and Edith remained together in the Gastzimmer,or sitting-room, for an hour and a half after Muller wentto bed. Edith now unburdened herself, told the wholetale of her lovelornness, of the brutality of her lover .

She did not know she was about to die, this strumpet,and she played a marvellous part . The artless pat on thehand ; the accidental touch ; the lingering glance . At 9.30in the evening, when the innkeeper and his family madetheir way to their rooms in the far wing of the hotel,Edith and Formis sat together, the best of friends .

Nevertheless, I think Formis may have been latentlysuspicious, that his inner man may instinctively havedistrusted the whole pantomime, but perhaps he belongedto those men who simply cannot bring themselves to boxsuch a woman's ears . Anyway, at i o o'clock they rose togo to bed and went upstairs, along the corridor, whereEdith and her lover had room Number Three, andFormis the room two doors farther on, Number Seven .Only Hans Muller and Gerhard Schubert know

exactly what happened then ; they were inside RoomNumber Three .

I have studied the layout and the details that areknown very closely, and I think that Edith, who held one

184

THE INN AT ZAHORIThe first-floor window half-hidden behind the left-hand umbrella is that of the room occupied

by Edith Kersbach ; from it she was carried, dying, down the rope ladder by her accomplices . Thewindow beneath the letter `N' is that of the room occupied by Formis . The Secret Sender wasbuilt into the loft at the extreme left . In the foreground runs the River Moldau .

CRAZY ODYSSEYof Formis's hands in hers, opened the door of her room,as if to say good-night to him, and then tried to pull himin with her .

His latent suspicions awoke and he drew back . Shedrove her claws into him and tried to drag him in ; thelacerations of the she-cat were found carved deep in hiswrist .And then - did he manage to draw his revolver and

shoot her, or did she get one of the bullets that weremeant for him? That we shall never know, unless HansMiiller or Gerhard Schubert speaks, and that is not likely.

Anyway, about i o o'clock the obliging waiter, whoslept in the basement, was awakened by the noise ofmany revolver shots . As he rushed upstairs, he was con-fronted by an unknown man with a revolver in eachhand. He fell back, down the stairs, but first he sawHans Muller dragging the body of Formis along thecorridor to Room Number Seven, heard Edith herselfscreaming in mortal anguish. The unknown man (whowas Schubert) drove the waiter and the chambermaid,who had also appeared, in curl-papers, on the scene, downthe stairs and into the basement, where he locked thedoor on them. There, shut in, they heard further bangsand noises, but were too frightened to move . The inn-keeper and his family, in the far wing, neither saw norheard anything of what was afoot .

Later, as rolling black smoke filled the basement, thecaptives, in fear of suffocation, broke out through thewindow and awakened the innkeeper . With the waiter,he rushed through this nightmare inn to the place of thetragedy. In Room Number Seven they found the petrol-

185

NEMESIS?soaked body of Formis, with two incendiary bombs,which had been prevented by the masses of smoke fromtaking full effect; they had only smoked and smouldered,not burst into flame . The microphone had been smashedto pieces by the murderers, but the Secret Sender itself,concealed in the loft, they never found .

A strange scene, now, in the chill and lonely valley .Clouds of smoke pouring from the inn . The waiter,rushing along the dark road to the nearest village . Asleepy and bemused village policeman, rushing back .along the dark road to the lonely inn. Telephone callsfrom the village post office to Prague . Endless delays,before the police of the nearest town, the police at thefrontier, could be reached . Meanwhile, the Mercedescar dashed through the night, dashed through the frontierposts without stopping. After that, the Czech frontierpolice always kept the barriers down - but only afterthat .

They found, the next day, a rope-ladder hangingfrom the window of Edith's room . That was how theunknown gunman, Gerhard Schubert, got in . Theyfound, in Formis's head, a bullet, and in his chest twomore . They found that petrol had been poured over hisbody, but had not caught fire . They found blood on therope-ladder. The two gunmen had lowered Edith thatway. In the river that runs past the little inn they washedher wounds; the bloodstained handkerchief was foundthere .

By a strange chance, the racing Mercedes was stoppedin the township of Loboshitz at one o'clock in the morn-ing, because of its excessive speed . The driver's papers

186

CRAZY ODYSSEYwere in order, and it was allowed to go . The policemanBoehm says that it only had two occupants, the two menwho sat in the front seats . In the back seat was `a moundof rugs and coats' . That was Edith .

Later inquiries revealed that the Mercedes car crossedthe German frontier between 4 and 5 o'clock in themorning. In the Saxon township of Konigsstein thetwo men brought Edith to a hospital . The doctorsexamined her and told them that she must be taken toDresden immediately, for an operation. On the waythere she died. (All these facts were established throughOtto Strasser's subterranean channels of information .)

I apologize to all good strumpets for calling her astrumpet. I have a large vocabulary, but find no wordin it for this - for Edith Kersbach, who was young, fair-haired, lovely, and a sports-mistress .Muller and Schubert received the award of io,ooo

marks which the Gestapo had put on Formis's head (asOtto Strasser's informants in Germany reported to him)and have a high place on the list of people with whomscores have to be settled when Hitler's regime is over-thrown .The methods of the German propaganda and Gestapo

machine in this exploit are interesting to study . Just asHitler's' invasions and annexations were always heraldedby a great press campaign of complaint about the provo-cation offered by the country to be attacked, whether itwas called Austria, Czechoslovakia, or Poland, so wasthis killing of one man in another country first announcedwith the usual plaint about intolerable provocation, inthe German press .

187

NEMESIS?The passion of the German mind for self-justification-

in-advance, whether the potential victim be a State or anindividual, is ineradicable . It is strange that OttoStrasser and Rudolf Formis, who were Germans them-selves and knew the men and the methods they had tofear, did not hear the warning bell in that violent attackon Strasser and his `intolerable Secret Sender' whichappeared in . the Volkischer Beobachter on January 12th,1935 the day before the murderers crossed the frontierin search of Formis!

Though the number of the Mercedes car, with fulldetails of its occupants and their papers, was given, theGerman Government blandly answered that it hadnever heard of such a car, of such persons, or of suchpassports and triptychs, and when the CzechoslovakGovernment renewed its formal protests, the reply wasthat all research had been fruitless; no trace what-ever of such a car, or of the passengers supposed to havetravelled in it, could be found .

But four and a half years later, when the present warhad begun and the Munich bomb explosion occurred,the Volkischer Beobachter, in accusing Otto Strasser and theBritish Intelligence Service of causing this, stated that hisSecret Sender `was destroyed on January 26th, 1935, bytwo SS leaders in execution of their orders' .Actually, the Sender was not destroyed, but confiscated

by the Czech police . Otto Strasser lost in Formis one ofhis most valuable and valorous helpers, as well as aweapon against Hitler which had become the talk ofGermany.

Although the Gestapo had once more failed to kill him,188

OTTO STRASSER AT THE GRAVE OF RUDOLF FORMIS

CRAZY ODYSSEYit had dealt him a heavy blow, and Formis was also oneof his closest personal friends . In the picture publishedopposite, you see Otto Strasser, and another BlackFront man, at Forinis's grave .

Once again, he had to start the one-man-war from thebeginning. The episodes of Dr. Pollack and Dr . Hebrewhad shown him that no man was to be trusted, themurder of Formis had proved how close the Gestapostill were behind him .

In Prague, the German Minister repeatedly inquiredof the Czechoslovak Government `when Dr . OttoStrasser is to be tried for operating a Secret Sender' ; theharassed Prague Government, too, was paying for thehospitality it had given such refugees-from-Hitlerist-tyranny as Dr . Hebrew .

On January 6th, 1936, Strasser was duly sentenced tofour months hard labour, without alleviating circum-stances. The sentence was confirmed on appeal . It wasnever served, because under Czech law, if a plea for thequashing of a sentence were lodged on some legalgrounds, the highest authority in the State had to con-firm or quash it. The law, however, apparently laiddown no time-limit for such a decision, and PresidentEdouard Benesh just put the document back in his`Pending' file each time it was put before him .Two Czechoslovak years remained to Strasser and he

used them to the full . He continued to publish his paper,until the hard-pressed Czechoslovak Government sup-pressed it. He continued the leaflet-war across thefrontier . Unfortunately, some of the most stirringepisodes of the one-man-war in this field cannot yet be

189

NEMESIS?told ; this would imperil the lives of men who still live .Some were caught, brought before the People's Courtand sentenced to death . Some were killed . Exploitswere planned and carried out which still cannot berecounted .

Strasser spared neither his nerves, his strength, nor hisaffections ; he used them all unsparingly, as a manshould, and remained in spite of everything a merryfellow, a citizen of the world, a good German, a goodEuropean, and a Revolutionary Socialist .Then came Munich and the British ultimatum to the

Czechoslovaks to surrender to the German demands .Once again, the pursuers reached out a hand that nearlytouched Strasser's shoulder . If he had stayed in Czecho-slovakia after that, he would six months later have beencaught like a rat in a trap, on that day, March 15th,1939, when Hitler's armies closed in on Prague from allsides; even destiny would have needed to rack its brainsto get him out of that. So, while those armies were takingtheir first slice of Czechoslovakia - the Sudetenland -he took an aeroplane, together with Wenzel Jaksch, theSudeten-German Socialist leader, and flew away, overtheir heads .

In the country he left behind him, the tragedy ofZahoii continued . It was not finished, is not yet finished .Formis's life was not the only life that was destroyed byit. The innkeeper, already a sick man, had his deathhastened by the events of that January night and thedays that followed it. His wife and daughter came toPrague and leased a little inn there . When Hitlerarrived, the Gestapo sought them out. The daughter, a

igo

CRAZY ODYSSEYgood friend and admirer of Strasser, was put in a con-centration camp . A bomb was planted in the inn .

Otto Strasser, now in almost-penury, found quarters,with his wife and children, in a little hamlet, Herrliberg,near Zurich . The German frontier was not much morethan a stone's throw away, and this, again, impressed thebeauties of Switzerland on his mind . Here he had, fromrespect for Swiss hospitality, to curtail operations in hisone-man-war, though his friends in Germany continuedto smuggle news and reports out to him ; but the war wascontinued on a small scale from Copenhagen, where oneof his chief helpers held the strings of the Black Fronttogether, and issued orders to the Black Front in Ger-many.

From Switzerland, Otto Strasser tried vainly to get toFrance or England. None would have him. The `re-fugees from Hitlerist oppression' were admitted andpetted in thousands, everywhere . For a man like this,the doors were closed . Here was `a Red', a man whowas `too anti-Hitler' . None would ever have dreamedof describing this man as `a victim of persecution' . Hewas this, though it would never occur to him to think ofhimself in such terms ; he is, as I say, a man .The war came and, a few weeks after its beginning,

on November 8th, 1939, when the anniversary of that firstHitlerist Putsch of 1923 was being celebrated, accordingto tradition, by the Old Guard of National Socialism inthe Burgerbraukeller at Munich, the bomb explodedwhich was either meant to kill Hitler or, like the Reichs-tag Fire, was the act of his own men, a new blood-curdler for the German masses, who simply cannot live

I9I

NEMESIS?without the feeling that they are being encircled andplotted against by secret and sinister foes . Like Tartarinof Tarascon, the Germans love to feel that `they' arelurking in the shadows, waiting to spring .

Within a few hours of the bomb explosion the Germanpolice informed the Swiss authorities that Otto Strasserwas the organizer of the plot (Himmler's statementissued on November 21st said that Georg Elser, the manarrested for complicity in the night of November 8th-9th,only `confessed', and incriminated Strasser, after six daysof obstinate denials, namely, on November 14th ; but heapparently knew on November 9th what Elser wouldadmit a week later .)

As I write, no light whatever has been cast on this darkaffair. The German Secret Police announced that theculprits were : Georg Elser, the completely unknownindividual arrested in Munich ; Otto Strasser, theinstigator and instrument of `the British Secret Service' ;and the `British Secret Service' itself, which was describedas having given Strasser the order to prepare the bombexplosion and the money for it ; two British consularofficials serving in Holland, Messrs. Richard HenryStevens and Sigismund Payne Best, were on the day afterthe Munich explosion, November 9th, 1939, enticed tothe German-Dutch frontier, there kidnapped by Gestapoagents, and held captive . They, Elser and Strasser wereannounced to be the accused men in a coming MunichBomb Trial.

As a student of the Reichstag Fire Trial, which endedin a farce, I may draw attention to the extraordinaryresemblance between that mock-trial and the Munich

I92

CRAZY ODYSSEYBomb Trial which the German Government contem-plated ; whether it will actually be held, remains to beseen. In the Reichstag Fire Trial the half-witted Dutchvagrant, van der Lubbe, was the actual incendiary; inthis case another equally obscure individual, GeorgElser, is supposed to have been the actual bomb-layer .In the Reichstag Fire Trail, Ernst Torgler, the GermanCommunist Parliamentary leader, was supposed to bethe German instrument of the malignant foreign foe thatsought to destroy Germany - International Bolshevism .In this case, Otto Strasser is supposed to be the Germaninstrument of the malignant foreign foe - Britain, benton the destruction of Germany, and the British SecretService. In the Reichstag Fire Trial, three BulgarianCommunist exiles, who chanced -to be in Berlin at thetime and had been earmarked for the part, were put inthe dock as the actual, foreign-born representatives of themalignant foreign foe - Bolshevism . In this case, Messrs.Stevens and Best appear as the foreign-born representa-tives of the malignant foreign foe - Britain .

It is an extraordinary mentality, which runs in a rut .It is cunning up to a point, and childish after that point .Just as Germany, in the murder of Formis, used preciselythe same method as in the invasion of Czechoslovakia,so is the same old bogyman fairytale being used for theMunich bomb plot .

I ought to add that I do not believe the Munich BombTrial will be held . After the farcical end of the Reich-stag Fire Trial, which ordered the beheading of amental deficient and had to acquit the other four men,because the possibility that world publicity would

1 93

NEMESIS?enable them to play the anti-Nazi trick of provinginnocence had been entirely overlooked, no great mock-trial was ever again held in Germany. Instead, thePeople's Court, with a majority of officers, Storm Troopcommanders, and high Secret Police officials among thejudges, was formed, and such trials were held in secret,so that the trick of proving innocence could no longer beworked. This was much more satisfactory. I cannotbelieve, after that experience, that the Germans will againmake themselves a laughing stock by staging anothersuch judicial comedy.But the Munich bomb itself remains a mystery . Otto

Strasser has regretfully to deny all knowledge of a bombwhich he would probably have liked to plant .

I happen to know, as I was in loose communicationwith him at the time about the then vague project of thisbook, that his financial circumstances were desperate ;nobody, least of all the British Secret Service, showedany anxiety to relieve them . I know also that he hadrepeatedly been refused permission to come to England,and though no reason was given, it is most probable thatthis was withheld in the desire to avoid offending thatGerman Government, and particularly its Fiihrer,whose desire for peace remained until the end the incor-rigible illusion of our own leaders . It is another illumin-ating commentary on our arrangements and our timesthat such a man should be implacably denied admissionto England at a time when undesirables in thousandshave been let through, welcomed, and even given pre-ferential treatment over the native-born citizens .

Strasser is himself convinced that the bomb was planted1 94

CRAZY ODYSSEYby the Nazis themselves, from the same motive that ledthem to fire the Reichstag - to give the German peoplevisible proof of the existence and implacable hatred ofthat malignant foe whom they accused of beginning thewar, Britain .

The kidnapping of the two British officials is a verystrange affair indeed . In its planning and execution itexactly follows the familiar methods of the Gestapo, as Ihave shown them in the repeated attempts to captureStrasser and in the killing of Formis . But one aspect ofit is most important .

The two men, as our own authorities stated, wereenticed to the frontier by the proposal of peace-parleys,put forward in the name of some important personageor group of personages in Germany . This tallies soclosely with the devices used to disarm Strasser's suspic-ions (for instance, the offer of financial and other supportin his anti-Hitlerist campaign) that I am convinced itwas a Gestapo trick. A second, though less likelypossibility, however, is that there was a peace offer, ofwhich the Gestapo got wind and which they intercepted .In that case, the point of engrossing interest would be -who was the man in Germany who wanted to talk peace?

But I do not believe in this theory . All the details aboutformer abductions point to my first explanation . In thatcase, the authorship of the Munich bomb explosion isclear to see. It was the work of the Gestapo, who timedthe abduction of the two British officials for the very nextday : they were to play the part of culprits .

For Strasser, the clutch of the Gestapo loomed murder-ously near, again, when the Munich bomb exploded .

I95

NEMESIS?He was but a mile or two from the German frontier .War was in progress . The Gestapo had chosen him forthe fourth man-in-the-dock, was demanding his extradi-tion. By methods which I cannot yet describe, hesucceeded, in this moment of danger, in breaking throughthe French refusal to have him in France . He obtainedpermission to go there, and in the twinkling of an eye heput Switzerland behind him and crossed yet anotherfrontier .

He came to Paris, convinced that the end of Hitler'sregime was now approaching, that the time for him toreturn to Germany and build his Fourth Reich was nowdrawing near. He had a very modest lodging, and fewweapons with which to resume the one-man-war andconquer. But, bursting with energy, as ever, he set towork; wrote ; negotiated ; interviewed and was inter-viewed ; tried to invigorate other men among the exiles inwhom he had some faith, to form a German NationalCouncil, as a kind of shadow-government for The Day ;and even found time to exercise his affections, which henever neglected . As I say, a man of enormous energyand unflagging enthusiasm .

In those circumstances, I met him . He had a crazyOdyssey behind him - well worthy of our Insanity Fair .

196

CHAPTER 9

NEMESIS IN THE SHADOWS

IN the spring of 1939, Otto Strasser, in his Swiss retreat,felt the imminence of the war he had foretold for manyyears as the inevitable result of Hitler's abandonment of asocial policy for a militarist one . For the second time inhis life, he felt, the starting-gun was about to sound . Thefirst war found him a young man, burning to be first inthe field, then shattered his scheme of things about himand left him floundering in chaos . The second war wouldfind him an exile and outlaw, with a price on his head ;but he felt, too, that it would bring him homecoming,and the belated fulfilment of his dreams for Germany .

So he set about, in that spring of 1939, to overhaul hissecret organization within Germany as best he couldthrough his headquarters in Copenhagen, to instructthose waiting shadows what they should do and howthey should act when war came. The order was `Cleardecks for action' ; but the captain was on a distant shore,and the crew were stowaways .

In this book, I have not been able to give more than ahint, here and there, of the kind of man, in Germany,who is pledged to Otto Strasser, but I know some of theirnames, and I have seen letters from others, and can saythat one day, if the enemies of Germany . are skilful intheir handling of this war, Hitler and his henchmen mayreceive a most unpleasant shock .

197

NEMESIS?Now the moment has come, I think, to show in these

pages how the Black Front worked, when the threat ofwar came near .

In Great Britain, the public was completely confuseduntil the last moment . Many people felt intuitively,perhaps, that war was coming, but did not understandwhy or know that it would inevitably come . This wasbecause the public was misled or misinformed by thosewhose duty it is to lead and inform it - the governmentand the press . One newspaper until the last momentrepeated, moron-like, `There will be no war in whichBritain will be involved this year, some time, any time,ever' ; to-day it could better prophesy that there will beno peace in which Britain will be involved this year ornext, but it does not say that . At least two other news-papers kept up the same lunatic chorus until war actuallycame. Orgies of ostrichism, of wishbone politics, werecelebrated .

This was unnecessary, unpatriotic and mendacious .The men whose business it was to study politics knew, orshould have known, long before how events would move .To show this, I am going to quote at length the Order-of-the-day which Otto Strasser, from exile, issued to hisBlack Front, inside Germany, long before war broke out .

The war began, or began for this country, on Septem-ber 3rd, 1939, and ever since then the people of thiscountry, misinformed now as they were before it began,have been shaking their heads and saying they couldn'tunderstand this war at all . At the beginning of May 1939,four months before the war began, Otto Strasser issuedthis order to his men :

198

NEMESIS IN THE SHADOWS`The course of events since March i 5th, 1939 [when

Prague was invaded] shows clearly that our old forecast,"Hitler means war", is rapidly approaching realization .Important signs, particularly the question of food supplies,suggest that the war will not break out until the latesummer; an earlier or later moment is possible, but this isirrelevant to the main development .

`As far as it is possible to foresee the course of such awar, it seems likely to be a defensive war in the West andan offensive one in the East ; in other words, it will bewaged against England and France only at sea and in theair, but against Poland on land . Contrary to Polishhopes, it may be confidently anticipated that the Germanattack in the east will be rapidly successful and that thePoles, possibly after heavy fighting and loss of life on bothsides, will within six or eight weeks be pushed back behindthe line which in the World War for years formed theGerman Eastern Front, and which probably satisfies themilitary and political aims of Berlin to-day. The air war,on the other hand, may lead to heavy losses for Germanyand a rapid decline in the strength and efficiency of theGerman air arm, whereas the Western Powers, partlythrough American help, will be able currently to makegood their losses . With the end of the Polish campaign,therefore, the situation of Germany in the air would havechanged to the sensible disadvantage of Germany, andthis would be of the greatest importance for the furtherdevelopment.'

The last two sentences contain one of Otto Strasser'sfew miscalculations in this remarkable order . Heassumed immediately - as Ribbentrop is said not to

1 99

NEMESIS?have believed - that Britain and France would at oncego to the help of Poland, but he further assumed, fromthat, that they would help Poland in the only way theycould - by attacking Germany from the air. This, heforesaw, would cause the German air force heavy losses,and the further development of the war would be affectedby such a deterioration in her air position . Actually,Britain and France, though they declared war in supportof Poland, delivered no attack at all from the air, andthus the end of the Polish campaign, from which theGerman air force emerged almost intact, left Germanyin a better position, at that stage of the war, than OttoStrasser foresaw .

The order, issued in May, 1939, continues :`Even if Italy should fight at Germany's side, it may

confidently be anticipated that the French and Britishfleets will quickly secure complete mastery of the Mediter-ranean. With the collapse of Poland, a new political andmilitary stage in the war will be reached . Hitler will haveno more success than Ludendorff had in 1917 in obtain-ing the hoped-for separate peace, and will, whether helikes it or not, have to prepare for an attack against theWest. Whether he try the direct attack on the MaginotLine, or his darling idea of a landing in England, or theindirect form of attack through the northern neutralStates, or a combination of these, is unimportant. Thedecisive thing is that he can no more avoid the attack inthe West, after the crushing of Poland (and possiblyRumania) than Ludendorff was able to avoid it aftercrushing Russia and Rumania, and that this attack isjust as certainly doomed to failure .'

200

NEMESIS IN THE SHADOWSI am not sure, as is Strasser, that Hitler will make this

great attack in the West . I always gathered, when I wasin Germany, that the West Wall was built for a war ofthis very kind, a war in which Germany had neither beenable to find mighty allies nor to separate Britain andFrance, and the idea was in that event to sit down behindthe West Wall, with an intact army and air force, andwait for the Western Powers, if they wished, to come andbeat Germany. Rather than attempt that, the Germansthought, they would be inclined sooner or later to makepeace, which would leave Germany in possession of thatmighty, and intact, army, and ready to start again onnew conquests after a breathing space . But perhapsStrasser is right ; we soon shall see, if we have not seen bythe time this book appears .

His order continues`At this moment [namely, between the collapse

of Poland and the attack on the West] our task movesfrom the preparatory to the acute stage : we must over-throw Hitler through a domestic revolution in Germany,in order to save Germany . The whole strategy of ourcampaign, from the first hour of the war onward, mustbe ruled by the principle : "Only the rapid overthrow ofHitler can save Germany from partitioning" . For onlyif the German Army is still strong, and capable of carry-ing on a defensive war for years, will there be a chancethat the growing desire to destroy Germany can bethwarted. Our most urgent task is to spread understand-ing of this fact, by every possible means, in the Germanarmy, the National Socialist Party, and the Germanpeople.'

201

NEMESIS?Proceeding with his order, Otto Strasser says :`Our tactics must be governed by circumstances to

some extent. The things to aim for are the early formationabroad of a German National Council, composed of men ofvarious political parties "between Fascism and Bolshe-vism" ; the groups of the Black Front in Germany mustwork with other enemies of the regime towards the com-mon end of its overthrow, and they should also preachthis doctrine : "Neither Fascism nor Bolshevism, but thealliance of army, workers and youth" .

`Our first task is to overthrow Hitler, probably be-tween the defeat of Poland and his attack against theWest. We know that only the possession of a strong armycan save us from a second Versailles. But alongside thatintact army, our best weapon against an excessive lust forimperialist conquest will be the establishment of a GermanSocialism. This is essential to our self-preservation inpost-Hitler Germany . It is important, too, in relation tothe questions of Austria and the Sudetenland. The justsolution, advocated by us, of free self-determination inthese territories will be favourably influenced in ourfavour by a reshaping of the economic and politicalorder in Germany. The world will be distrustful of us,and the argument we must use is : "Do not partitionGermany and preserve Prussia, as you did before, butpartition Prussia and preserve Germany" . This wouldnecessarily bring with it the breaking-up of the Prussianadministration, the big Prussian estates, and the Prussianarmy, and also a Federal system in all branches ofGerman life .

`We must be ready to reject an Entente dictate, even202

NEMESIS IN THE SHADOWSif we should by this action be excluded for the time beingfrom power in Germany. The development of the socialquestion in Germany and in other countries would evenin that event soon produce a favourable situation for us .'

I have given lengthy quotations from this order, be- .cause it was issued so long before the war openly beganand shows how clearly Otto Strasser and his followerssaw the course of coming events. Men who are so wellinstructed need to be reckoned with .

For that reason I quote something of another document,not this time an order issued by Otto Strasser to his men,but a report on the situation in Germany made by hisfollowers there and smuggled out to him . In its exactforecast of events, and in some of the other things it says,it is even more remarkable, and excellently well illus-trates the interplay, between Strasser in exile and hismen in Germany, which was kept up until the outbreakof war and still has not quite stopped .

This document knows nothing of the doubts which atthe time -July 28th, 1939, nearly five weeks before theoutbreak of war - racked the British press and Britain'srepresentatives on the score of Hitler's intentions . Washe bluffing, or was he not bluffing? Would he seizeDanzig, would he not seize Danzig? Would he stopthere, would he not stop there? And all the old drearylitany of the years 1 933-39.

It says that Hitler's determination to crush and parti-tion Poland by one means or another, `a la Munich, orby war', is unshakable . `None who knows him and hispolicy can have the smallest doubt that he will in 1939fulfil his solemn undertaking to incorporate Danzig in

203

NEMESIS?the Reich. It is quite certain that he will do this - be-cause by this means he can begin the dissolution ofPoland, which is an essential condition of his furtherforeign policy. The Munich method would of coursesuit him better ; but if this should not be possible he isjust as ready for the "little war" with Poland as for the"big war" with the Western Powers .'

The document then goes on to give a precise forecastof the course of the Polish campaign - a concentricattack by four German armies, planned to bring about aPolish collapse and to overrun Warsaw within threeweeks. This would enable him, after fortifying his newfrontier, to transfer the bulk of the German Army to theWest. About the summer of 1 940, says the author of thisdocument, the inevitable `great war' would begin withthe lightning-like occupation of Rumania and Denmark,as sources of oil and food supplies, and with an attack onHolland.

`The domestic situation in Germany', says the docu-ment, `will first show signs of movement at that point,and may rapidly develop in a manner likely to make ita decisive factor in the further course of the war . It isbeyond doubt that the German people will at first sup-port the Hitler regime in a war against Poland . Notonly the feeling for Danzig and the antagonism to thePoles are responsible for this, but also the expectation thatEngland will remain neutral. This expectation may beillusory, but it must not be forgotten that the speechesand actions of the Chamberlain Government havenourished such illusions until quite recently . The imme-diate intervention of England in the war would thus at

204

NEMESIS IN THE SHADOWSfirst only lend new popularity to the old tune of perfidiousAlbion, though it would unquestionably give the Germanpeople a mighty jolt. But this shock would have reallydeep and lasting effects only if the British and Frenchair fleets should bomb German towns . It is true that apeople with good nerves and a good conscience is ratherprovoked into stubborner resistance than cowed by airattack, but it is equally sure that the effect on a peoplewith exhausted nerves and a bad conscience must sowthe seeds of panic . But the German people in 1939 hasthese exhausted nerves, and in its great majority has alsoa guilty conscience, because it has had to suppress itsbetter instincts and knowledge for so long from fear ofthe government's terror. As long as tidings of victorycome in, they will cancel out the hatred of the enemiesof Hitlerism and the latent panic of the masses . But assoon as it becomes clear that an offensive war againstthe Western Powers impends, a revolutionary situationwill immediately develop in Germany, which can onlybe aggravated by attempts to repress it . The fate ofHitler and the war, of peace, and of Europe depend onthe use that is made of that revolutionary situation inGermany.'

This document, also, like Otto Strasser's order, as-sumes that the great offensive against the WesternPowers must come, and I am doubtful of this. Every-thing would be much simpler if it would come .

But in all other respects these two documents, writtenso long before the war, seem to me most apt to this story.They show a revolution in the womb . It may be stillbornor it may be a lusty infant, but the embryo is there, and

205

NEMESIS?in these papers you see it. They show how clearly, andwith what a small margin of error, these unknown menlooked into Hitler's mind, into the future of Germany,and into the war, and made their plans accordingly . Thatis the way a Black Front works .

This is the way that Nemesis stealthily approachesfrom the shadows . In the story of Otto Strasser and hisBlack Front these two documents are vivid illustrations .

CHAPTER 10

FOURTH REICH?

I HAVE told the story of a German, Otto Strasser, as faras he has lived it . It has taken him to penurious exile inParis, but he has never ceased to struggle and has nevercounted the cost . His day may dawn soon .

Hitler's day is already closing. He becomes the preyof the historians ; in the tranquillity of a later day theywill be able soberly to examine him. For us, who stillhave our lives to live, he is already yesterday's news,though he will plague us a while yet .He was the destroyer ; as Otto Strasser says, his part

in our times was a destructive one, and he has accom-plished it . He has wrecked the lives and homes ofmillions and may yet wreck those of millions more .

But his course is nearly run, and for us, who live inthese times, the important things are : what men willsucceed him ; what sort of Germany will follow his Ger-many; shall we at last be able to live at peace with thatGermany; shall we at last be able to plan our future andlive for our countries instead of being called on every sooften by elderly gentlemen to die for them ; and, aboveall, is there hope that a better social order will come outof this war, that the high hopes with which the 1914generation went to war can yet be realized ; or is the 1939generation to be a lost generation, too?

The hopes of a better order, as I think, are still not207

NEMESIS?good, unless new men and new ideals arise in the laterstages of the war. At its beginnings, men see far lessclearly than at the beginning of the last war, what theyare fighting for. Mr. Chamberlain, in the course of hisweekly statements about the war, has only once said any-thing that a plain man could bite on, and then he usedfour words of French : Ilfaut en finir.

That is true ; that a man can understand; that is thething our inner voices tell us ; we must have done withthis nightmare. But after that Mr . Chamberlain alwaysspoke in English, and said of course we did not want topull up `the old frontier posts' (are those planted byHitler after his four invasions `old'?), that we did notwant `a vindictive peace', and so on, and in the midst ofwar we were at appeasement .

The awful danger looms ahead that after this war theprocess of deterioration in all the standards of truth andjustice and humanity will continue further ; that it willnot be used to wipe out the real evils that grew up be-tween 1933 and 1939 and to resume the onward-and-upward movement that came with the nineteenthcentury and would probably have continued uncheckedbut for the lamentable discovery of coal and the inven-tion of the new form of slavery, machine-slavery .

This period of destruction, in which Hitler has playedthe biggest part yet, has been going on for thirty-fiveyears. In all that time Europe has gone from crisis tocrisis and from war to war : Morocco crisis, Tripoli war,Balkan crisis, Balkan wars, a World War which left halfEurope in ruins, then revolution, anarchy, inflation,Putsches, and gradually more little wars, the Turco-

208

FOURTH REICH?Greek war, the Abyssinian war, the Rhineland crisis,the bloodless Austrian, Sudetenland and Prague wars,the Albanian war, the Polish war, and now, again, thebig war .

If this continues, we shall have the `Chinese conditions'in Europe that I wrote about in a memorandum of 1936 ;a war would come in Europe soon, if it were not prevented,I said, and this war would either end in a quick victoryfor Germany or in a protracted struggle which woulddegenerate into a kind of Chinese chaos in Europe .

If we are to survive at all, we must get back to a stableand an honourable order in Europe, and we cannot dothat without Germany . For this reason, the Germanythat will come of this war is, once more and yet again,the key to our own lives . You cannot resume the marchtowards civilization by barbaric methods, as Hitlerproclaimed, and as our many influential old wives,terrified of the Reds with whom he presently linkedarms, longed to believe .

And this is the greatest danger, as I think, in this war ;that our rulers, though disillusioned about Hitler, willseek to establish in Germany a regime of men as muchlike themselves as possible, without regard for the longingthat exists in men's souls for a better, a juster and a stableorder - a longing that in perpetual disappointment leadsto desperation and anarchy.

This is the reason why I shiver when I see the figure ofGoring advancing upstage . Goring means fire andsword - the Reichstag fire and the present war .

Men who used to think that Hitler was a boon tomankind, or at all events to mankind of their own par-

209

NEMESIS?ticular class, are now turning their eyes on Goring . Weought really to have known better about Hitler, theythink; was he not a housepainter? Now Goring - ah,that's a man, a sahib . What a pity he was not the Fi hrer!Perhaps he will be yet .

So you read that the Marquess of Londonderry onJanuary 14th, 1940, though he was now convinced ofHitler's `unbalanced mind', has `a fairly accurate appre-ciatign of Goring's character' . And this appreciation isthat `Goring is loyal and dependable in a crisis. He is areal German ; he could be cruel and ruthless and unscrup-ulous, but I would sooner deal with Field-Marshal Goringthan any German that I have met .'

And so too with Sir Nevile Henderson, whose delusionsabout Hitler and Hitler's National Socialism (`this' greatsocial experiment') persisted long . He did not knowGermany well when he became our Ambassador there,a year or two before the invasions began, and took longto learn. `Goring may be a blackguard,' he said,in January 1940, `but not a dirty blackguard .' Thedistinction may seem a fine one to people of simplethought. To subtler minds it contains a great difference .A blackguard is just a man who might murder his fellow-officers and their wives, put thousands of his fellow-countrymen in concentration camps, fire a Reichstagand the like - all black deeds, perhaps, but notdirty . A dirty blackguard is presumably a man whoconsorts with Bolshevy .

So there we have it, all over again, in the selfsamewords. The same illusion ; or else, the same wish-to-be-duped. The same danger to this country, to Europe, and

210

FOURTH REICH?to our common future . Goring, the Reichstag fire-man, the shoot-to-kill order man, the executioner ofGeneral Schleicher, Frau Schleicher, Gregor Strasser andcountless other defenceless people ; the secret-rearma-ment wizard ; the man who in his first speech after thiswar began proclaimed that `if my soldier's heart had itsway I would show these Englander that they can bebeaten' . He is `unscrupulous', but also `loyal and de-pendable in a crisis' .

Il faut en finir . How? We shall never have done withthis thing our livelong day, if this mentality continues togovern England . Goring is as bad for us, for Germany,for Europe as Hitler, or worse . A consolation of mine,as a writer, is that nine months before this war broke out,at Christmas 1938, I wrote for an American paper anarticle which said that, when it broke out, this Goringracket would soon follow. I kept the typescript by me,and it is becoming, as the Germans say, aktuell, or highlytopical .

I mention this because I want to say, in time, that anydeal with Goring would be disastrous for us . Goring,more than Hitler, has led us to our present pass. He wasthe man who told Reuter's correspondent in December1934: `English anxiety about a threat from the air is sense-less, for Germany has not the technical means to attemptan air attack . Of course we have a few experimentalmachines, but to suggest that we have hundreds ofmilitary aeroplanes is ridiculous .' And in that very samemonth, December 1934, Mr. Baldwin stated : `It is not thecase that Germany is rapidly approaching equality withus. If Germany continues to execute her air programme

911

NEMESIS?without acceleration, and if we continue to carry outours at the present approved rate, we estimate that weshall have in a year's time in Europe a margin -inEurope alone - of nearly 50 per cent' . And just twelveweeks later, on March 12th, 1935, Goring, whose secretair force had in the meantime reached the desired pointof superiority, ironically told another British newspapercorrespondent : `German aerial rearmanent is now com-pleted and an independent Air Ministry has been set upunder my leadership' . A few days after that, again,Hitler told Sir John Simon and Mr . Anthony Eden thatthe German air force was as strong as or stronger thanthe British forces throughout the British Empire .'

To trust this man, who derisively hoodwinked ourleaders, to treat with him on the basis that he is loyal andtrustworthy, would be to invite disaster . This is onlyone of the things about Goring that should make anyBritish statesman shy like a startled foal at any idea of adeal with Goring. I recall this particular incidentbecause the Habsburgs and Bourbons show us that somepeople never learn .

As long as ill-informed or obdurately unseeing menhave a word to say in affairs in England, we are likelyto lose this war ; that is to say, we cannot now, short ofsome inconceivable blunder, lose it in the field, but weshould lose the peace, again .

For this is the position as I write in February 1940 :We cannot - failing that gigantic blunder-- lose this

war in the field now, because (1) Germany failed toseparate us from France, or France from us, and to attackeach singly, and (2) because Germany did not find

2 12

FOURTH REICH?an ally whose military strength, added to her own,would have made a total great enough for the two toattack France and Britain together and overwhelmthem both .

The ally with whom she might have done that - andthis was the reason why I so dreaded that our leaderswould inveterately pursue the ignoble policy miscalledAppeasement until it brought Germany and Bolshevytogether -was Soviet Russia . But she needed to do it, ifshe intended to do it all, immediately at the outbreakof war . A full Nazi-Bolshevist military alliance, ajoint offensive with the full strength of those twoarmies, would still be a terrible danger for us, but atthe least we can say that we are, or should be, in amuch better position to meet it than we were sixmonths ago .There are two dangers between which we have to

steer. The first is that Germany be crushed so completelyand reduced to such exhaustion and chaos that she col-lapse into Communism, and this danger is remote .

The other, and greater danger is that, dazzled by theprospect of Hitler's personal disappearance, and thus ofbeing able to claim that they had `ended Hitlerism', ourrulers should make what, by the three-card-trick method,could be represented as a peace, with somebody in Ger-many who would be left in possession of an intact Ger-man army and air force .

The name of this danger is Goring, and it is a mortaldanger. In the Reichstag fire and in the secret-rearma-ment hoax this man has given proof of the greatestcunning ; in the shoot-to-kill order and the mass-murder

2 1 3

NEMESIS?of people he disliked on June 3oth, 1934, he gave theproof of the most complete ruthlessness ; his eternal dreamis to humble England ; and he is quite ready to be bluffand hearty with any influential foreigners he wishes todupe if bluffness and heartiness will help .A middle way between these two dangers must be

found if we are to be left any hope of peace after this war .A Goring mock-peace would mean more wars; a com-pletely ruined, Communist or anarchic Germany mightnot mean war, but who wants a heap of ruins in themiddle of Europe?

The third way is the best -to support the men inGermany who want to build something new and wantpeace, and to pave the way for them, somehow, bydestroying the German faith in German invincibility andby making Germany feel what Germany has never yetfelt -the rigours, within her own walls, of that warwhich she has carried in the last twenty-five years intothe lands of Frenchmen, Britons, Belgians, Spaniards,Czechs, Rumanians, Serbs, Poles and Russians .

This is tremendously difficult now, because of thoselocust-eaten years, but if we are ever to reach peace inEurope it has to be done .

When this war ends, or perhaps before it ends, whenit reaches a certain stage, the men who do not countto-day, whose names are hardly known, will return totheir countries - the exiles . That happened in and afterthe last war . Some of them returned for good, but notfor good; their works were evil .

Lenin and Trotsky were plague-carriers, sent to Russiaby the Germans to promote their war-aims. They did

214

FOURTH REICH?their work, and achieved what seemed impossible ; theycreated in Russia a far worse tyranny than that of theTsars, which in retrospect to-day looks positively benevo-lent beside it. Benesh and Masaryk returned to Prague,and put democracy into actual practice ; this was the oneexample in post-war Europe of a State which truly em-bodied some of the ideals for which the 1914-18 war wasfought - by the men whofought. It was a great achieve-ment . Pilsudski returned to Warsaw, and was lesssuccessful .But all these men had one thing in common - they

were, until they returned from their exile, less known inthis country than the obscurest, bottom-of-the-bill music-hall comedian, the last outsider at Epsom, or the secondreserve man of the Galashiels second eleven . Yet, theyplayed a big part, and if even Britain's most highlyeducated men, who live in a state of amazement at thethings that happen in Europe, had known anythingabout them, we need not have come to this war .

Now the time for the return of the exiles is approachingagain. This time, the German exiles are most important,for us. That is the main reason why I have written thisbook about Otto Strasser, and about the Fourth Reichthat he would like to build .What would it mean to us? Could we work with

it? Would it leave us in peace? Would it stand forpeace? How would it compare with the Goring Reichthat threatens us? Would it offer us the hope thatreason and justice and humanity and liberty, but notlibertinism as in the Germany of i g t 8-33, would returnto Europe?

2 1 5

NEMESIS?The answer to this question, What will the next Ger-

many be?, is at once the answer to the question, Whatwill our future be?

Before considering it, Otto Strasser thinks that theouter world should essentially understand a vital factorthat it overlooks - what he calls the deutsche Sehnsucht,or German yearning, for something that we will call, inorder to give it a name in a few syllables, Socialism,although it is not fulfilled by the Socialism of the present-day Labour or Socialist parties in any country, or by theSocialism of Moscow .

This longing, this yearning, this impulse, he says, isineradicably present in the souls of the great majority ofGermans, and the several incidents I have described inprevious chapters show the writhings of this soul in itssearch for it. It is the product of the hope universallyborn in the minds of humane and simple men, during theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for a better socialorder, for a fairer adjustment of their workaday lives andhuman relationships .As yet, he says, the groups in power have always

diverted this mighty impulse, at the moment when theythought it dangerous to their own especial position orwealth or influence, into the channel of War. The peoplewanted something, clamorously ; then give them some-thing else,, to keep their minds occupied .As this is the background to Otto Strasser's whole

political thought and philosophy, and to his plans for anew Germany, it must be understood . It is not difficultto understand . Simply expressed, this was the develop-ment.

2 1 6

FOURTH REICH?In the first decade of this century this deutsche Sehn-

sucht, this German longing, first expressed itself openlyin the rapid growth of the Socialist Party, a phenomenononly eclipsed in history by the still more rapid growth ofthe National Socialist Party in 1930-33. `The Kaiser',says Otto Strasser, `had a mortal shock when, in 1913, athird of the seats in the Reichstag suddenly filled withSocialists. That was why he made the war of 1914 . Thepeople needed to have their thoughts turned to somethingelse, and the only thing that serves that end, in such amoment, is the old device of a war of imperialist conquest .

`Thus the deutsche Sehnsucht was disappointed the firsttime . The Socialists fell into line, voted military credits,cheered the Kaiser . The Sehnsucht, the deep-rooted im-pulse, was left leaderless and bemused, like a flock ofshepherdless sheep . In order to forethwart a revolution,the Hohenzollern monarchy made the war of 1914-18 .'

The loss of that war reawakened the revolutionary feel-ing, the Sehnsucht . `But the times were chaotic,' saysStrasser, `and this longing and feeling had a completelychaotic and turbulent character, akin to those of a youngman or girl who wants something ardently but does notknow what. On all hands were inward despair anddisbelief and hopelessness ; risings and Putsches ; thecollapse of confidence ; the break-up of the old familyorder ; the licentious exploitation of the young ; recurrentfinancial scandals ; the mushroom-like growth of mon-strous industrialist concerns, trusts and syndicates ; thedestruction, through the inflation, of the middle-class andthe small manufacturer ; anarchist conditions in art ; themurder of Ministers .'

2 1 7

NEMESIS?But out of this chaos, the old Sehnsucht, the longing,

gradually reappeared . The masses still did not seeclearly the goal they groped for, but the great bulk of thepeople were revolutionary-minded. They wanted to berid of all these pestilent things and to be given somethingnew.

Now came Hitler, and gave a single direction to thisrevolutionary longing and impulse . Immediately, theold problem raised its head . Was this clamant urge, thissocial Sehnsucht, to be satisfied, or was it once again to beblindfolded and nose-led in the direction of War? Wasall that pent-up hope and energy to be misused oncemore for the ends of war, in order to preserve the thingswhich the Sehnsucht wished to destroy?

Hitler gave the answer . This, as I have fully shown,was the eternal and unbridgeable gap between him andOtto Strasser . Hitler never admitted what he had done,any more than the Kaiser did, but, after gaining power bypromising to fulfil the social Sehnsucht, he gave Germanythe stone of war .

People who study these things, and try to look withintelligence into the future, should constantly bear inmind that at Hitler's first election, after the Reichstagfire, the last election to give any indication of the politicalthought of the German people, that of March 5th, 1 933,eighty per cent of the entire electorate voted for Socialistparties . In a house of 647 seats, 502 were held by partieswhich had promised the electorate, filled with that socialSehnsucht, Socialism : 288 National Socialists, 120 Social-ists, ioo Communists. The National Socialists received17,000,000, the Socialists 7,000,000 and the Communists

218

FOURTH REICH?5,000,000 votes ; all other parties, about 8,ooo,ooo votesbetween them .

These figures clearly prove the truth of Otto Strasser'sstatement - that by 1933 the old social Sehnsucht,diverted to the outlet of war by the Kaiser in 1913, wasfar stronger and far more clamant than ever . It isimportant to understand this, because he believes thatGermany is in the course of a revolution, as was Englandin the sixteenth and France in the eighteenth century,which must come to its consummation, and that theKaiser, Hitler and the two diversions of the Sehnsucht arebut incidents in a historical process which is - inflexiblygoing on. The task of Europe now, he says, if Europe isto live, is to contrive, (i) that the Sehnsucht should not athird time be used, by Goring or another such man, tobring about war, and (2) to divert it from turning toCommunism - and that is where he comes in .

Hitler did just what the Kaiser had done twenty yearsearlier - he diverted the stream from the social outlet itsought to the outlet of war. Under him, all the mightyenergy of the German people was applied to that end,with a ruthlessness and single-mindedness that far outdidthe Kaiser's . One of his closest collaborators, GeneralKonstantin Hierl, Commander of the Labour ConscriptArmy, in his Foundations of German Military Policy, put thewhole thing in the proverbial nutshell, and opened thenutshell for our benefit, in these words :

`The terribly pressing burden upon our people of beinga people without space will have a continually worseningeffect upon the lowest and economically weaker strataof the workers and peasants. Sometime, the flame of

2 19

NEMESIS?indignation will flare up from among these strata .Unless we want the revolutionary will to liberation of thelower strata to lead to an explosion, we must transformit into a driving-force for our national liberation .'

There you have the full confirmation of Otto Strasser'swords, and the reason for this war, The thoughts of theGerman people must be turned from that social Sehnsucht,which might ensure peace and benefit mankind ingeneral, and clamped on War. In this way the Sehnsucht,the revolutionary longing for a better social scheme ofthings in Germany, was for the second time turned asideand allowed to blow off steam on Spaniards, Poles,Czechs, Britons and Frenchmen .

But, says Otto Strasser, the Sehnsucht is still there,stronger than ever after this second three-card-trick.Soon, in the exhaustion and disillusionment of war, itwill break out again, more clamant than ever . Are themilitarists, the monarchists, then, to be helped back topower again, so that they can keep up this game for ever?Or, failing that, is Germany to be crushed completely, sothat the Sehnsucht will find its outlet in Communism?

These are the two dangers he sees, and of the two, hethinks the first the greater and worse - because the Ger-mans themselves can avert the second if they are allowed .

The end of the second stage in the German Revolution,the two stages of frustration and misuse, is coming .`Hitler', says Otto Strasser, `made it the epoch of destruc-tion and in that sense may have played an essential part .He introduced a medley of half-conceived ideas which henever carried through . The State of Germany was tobe organized anew, on the basis of the old German tribal

220

FOURTH REICH?divisions, or Gaue. He has never done it . The Statedivisions remain, with Prussia dominant as ever. TheReich Parliament and the various State Parliamentsstand to-day as they stood when he came to power -empty shells, but still they stand, with their Cabinets,Ministers and deputies. The Reichstag, which meets oncea year or less to be drilled by Sergeant-Major Goring,who tells the 8oo SS men and Yes Yes men when tostand up, when to sit down, and when to go home, islarger than it ever was, and every one of these men drawsa large salary. Goring even has a body called the`Prussian State Council', formed six or seven years ago,the members of which draw the handsome sum of i,ooomarks a month for their services - and have never met!The same thing happened with the Church . The Evange-lical and Catholic Churches were to be dethroned infavour of a national church, a German Christian Church,under a Reich Bishop . Some confusion was introducedin the Church at the beginning, and the militant PastorNiemoller, who protested, was interned ; but to-day theposition of the two great Churches remains completelyunchanged. The State pays large subventions to the one,collects taxes for the other, and has done both anenormous service by appearing to be antagonistic to them,for this has driven masses of people who before Hitler hadstopped going to church into those very deserted temples .The same thing happened in every other department ofGerman life. Germany to-day is in the condition of ahalf-ruined house of which the foundations still stand -the old State divisions, the old Reichstag and StateGovernments, and capitalism .'

221

NEMESIS?The only things that were completely destroyed were

liberty of thought, the organizations of the working-classes, and the hope, that Sehnsucht, for a better socialorder. The only things that were completely effected wererearmament, remilitarization and war . The entirestrength of the nation was turned to forging swords, in theinterest of armaments makers and those who grow richthrough wars, and the war duly came .

`When Hitler goes', says Strasser, `the period of destruc-tion will come to an end . The Sehnsucht will break throughfor a third time, and this time it must be fulfilled, ifGermany and Europe are to find peace .' For thisreason, he sees the greatest present danger to Germanyand Europe, not in Communism - the old bogy whichwas used to bring about this war - but in the effortswhich are now being made behind the scenes to restorethe old, war-obsessed militarism in Germany under somenew name.

Strasser sees three possible endings to this war, andthinks the fate of Europe in this century rests upon thechoice that is made between these three :

(i) A fight-to-a-finish which would after a long, longtime lead to a revolution from below in Germany ; that is aviolent eruption of the old, reawakening Sehnsucht amongthe exhausted and tormented masses and - SovietGermany. He does not think this likely .

(2) A deal behind-the-scenes between monarchists,leading financiers, and the old ruling-classes generally,led by such people as Goring and Schacht, and men ofthe same kind in other countries, for the abdication ofHitler, the enthronement of Goring or another of his kind

222

FOURTH REICH?and possibly the recall of the Hohenzollerns and Habs-burgs. This he thinks more likely and fears greatly; in it,he sees the forcible repression of the old social Sehnsucht fora third time, the beginning of a new period of great wars,and a continuation of the Gadarene gallop in Europe .

(3) The overthrow of Hitler by men of civic and socialconscience inside Germany who would not be the instru-ments of international capitalism, big business, monarch-ism and the rest. These men he sees in a part of theArmy, a part of the National Socialist Party, and a partof the workers ; in other words, the men of his own BlackFront. This would in effect mean that the developmentwhich was broken on January 3oth, 1933, when Hitlerdecided for collaboration with big business and biglandownership and against the Schleicher-Strasser-Leipart coalition, would be resumed, the threads pickedup and joined together where they were severed, thepromise of a German Socialism fulfilled .

He hopes for this ending to the war, in which he seesthe fulfilment of the Sehnsucht, and the promise of peace .He calls this the revolution from above, and when I askedhim if he, as a good revolutionary, thought that revolu-tions could be made from above, he answered : `In Ger-many, only from above.' I had to admit the truth of this .

These three ways out of the war are worth closer study .The first, Otto Strasser does not take very seriously, be-cause of the detestation of the majority of Germans, wholong for their Socialism, of Communism . He sees it onlyas a possibility of an anarchic but as yet distant future,and thinks that, before that time comes, the men inGermany who think as he thinks will have intervened to

223

NEMESIS?prevent it - unless they are tripped up by cosmopolitanintriguers before then .

The second possibility he does take very seriously, andI know enough about what is going on behind the scenesto know that he is right . One of the most depressingthoughts to-day is the thought of that preliminary peaceconference which is in progress between all sorts ofancient aristocrats, Jewish politicians, internationalbankers and moneyed wire-pullers generally ; most ofthem are in Paris, London, and New York, and thespectacle of these people, none of whom will ever hear ashot fired, playing about with the jigsaw puzzle of Europeagain, and fitting in the pieces in the way they think bestfor their own particular rackets, does not augur well .

The time is coming when these groups may achievethe substitution of Goring or some other man for Hitler,and they would then present him to the world, after hisprevious consent to various plans of their own, as theman to end Hitlerism, the man to avert chaos, possiblyas the man to restore Hohenzollernism, and, quite con-ceivably, as the man to save the world from Bolshevism .The isms would come into their own again, and the olddreary-go-round of regimentation, militarism and warwould begin again .

This is the three-card-trick that Otto Strasser most fears .`To say, "After Hitler, chaos" is nonsense', he says .`Hitler was chaos, and the end of Hitler is an end tochaos. The world is in danger, from fear of the future, offalling back on the past, which it fought the first WorldWar to vanquish - on the Hohenzollerns, the Habs-burgs, Goring, the Prussian generals . This is wrong .

224

FOURTH REICH?The thing to do is boldly to face the future and buildsomething new.'

`For that reason' - continues Otto Strasser - `I shouldnot propose a return to the past in anything, neither inthe colonial question nor in anything else, but offer aconstructive plan to build a new order . This war cameout of the old war ; and Hitler and all the other miserycame out of that ; so that recourse to the old is no cure,no solution, offers no promise of peace or security ortranquillity. A restoration of 1 9 13 means a restorationof the first World War . At first sight it may seem analluring idea, because easily-frightened people tend toturn to the devil that they know rather than the devilthat they do not know . By means of force - insideGermany the German Army, and outside Germany theAllied armies - it might be possible to set up a new orderof this kind in Germany . But it would not satisfy Ger-many domestically and it would not secure peace inEurope. For the new Kaiser or new ruler would mean areturn to 1914, when the social Sehnsucht first becameacute which now exists in far more acute form ; and inorder to turn the people's thoughts to other things thisnew Hohenzollern Germany would, once again, immedi-ately revert to its imperialist policy - a big navy, coloniesand all the rest . Similarly with the Habsburgs in SouthGermany. A Habsburg cannot renounce the Habsburgclaim to Slovakia, Croatia, Galicia, Trieste, Lemberg .They have to sign on the dotted line in Budapest thatthey will never renounce these claims . Precisely becausethey had been installed after a lost or half-lost war, theywould energetically defend themselves against the

225

NEMESIS?reproach, which their own people would level at them,that they were Kaisers by the grace of London or Paris,and would immediately set about to prove how patrioticand imperialist they were - as they have always done .Any such manoeuvre would mean that the legacy of thiswar would be worse than that of the last . It woulddefeat the only end worth fighting for - a real pacifica-tion of Europe .'

These words of Strasser are true . I have lived longenough in the countries of the Hohenzollern and Habs-burg monarchies to know that they are true . Whetheranybody in this country can understand their truth, I donot know. I have just read a book in which a professedexpert on foreign politics reproaches President Benesh ofCzechoslovakia with his stupidity in opposing the restora-tion of the Austrian monarchy, and as long as Britain hasa mighty word to say in the affairs of Europe, but remainsat this level of knowledge of them, I cannot see clearlyhow peace can ever be assured in Europe .

These are Otto Strasser's arguments against a deal,with some man or group of men in Germany, of the kindwhich may threaten us before long . It might be on thebasis of a monarchist restoration, or on that of a com-mon front against Bolshevy, but no good could come ofit, only more and more crises, more and more wars, afurther deterioration in conditions everywhere . Weshould find that we had been tricked again .

What, then, is Otto Strasser's own conception of anending to the war that would be good for Germany andgood for Europe?

Quite frankly, and it is difficult for a German to admit226

FOURTH REICH?this, he does not hope for much at all until Germany feelsthe pinch of hunger and the rigours of war. But whenthat stage has been reached, as I said, he believes thatHitler, and not only Hitler but the equally dangerousmen around him, can be overthrown by a movementrepresenting Germans in all camps - and his own BlackFront alone has its men in all camps, save the Communistcamp but including the Nazi camp .The coalition which could have saved Germany and

Europe on January 3oth, 1933, but for those intrigues ofPapen, Goring and the panic-stricken rich men, was oneof the Reichswehr, the socially-minded National Socialistsand the trade unionist workers ; this coalition wasrepresented by the three names, General Schleicher,Gregor Strasser, and Leipart . After eighteen months ofHitlerism, and of public disillusionment, this coalitionbecame a practical possibility again, and was againcrushed, this time by killing its leaders, by Goring andhis associates . Now, in the midst of war, it is raising itshead again; its name now is The Black Front . Its great-est enemy is still Goring - for Hitler is finished .

Otto Strasser believes that this time the sound solutionwill come true, that this combination of forces in Ger-many can and will rise to destroy Hitlerism and, at longlast, really build a new Germany. But - how well heknows his Germans - to that end these men in Germanyneed a man over them, a word of command . And to thatend again, the German National Council, formed amongthe exiles, is in his view essential . As yet, he has failedto form it. He is one man alone, he has not the powerfulfinancial backing available to any man who will make

227

NEMESIS?himself the tool of interested groups, and these groups, asI said, which have their own especial interests and notthose of Europe or Germany at heart, are at presentmuch attracted by the person of Hermann Goring .The German National Council which Strasser is

seeking to form, so that the men in Germany who awaitthe word should have some organized body to look to,ready to give orders and accept responsibility for themwhen Hitler's house showed signs of cracking, would beformed of men of the type I have so often described inthis book, men of his own type, of the type of GregorStrasser, Rudolf Formis, of the three Reichswehrlieutenants, of the members of the Black Front-men,that is, of patriotic, Christian, and Socialist feeling.

Men whom Otto Strasser would like to enlist in aGerman National Council, when the war has developedfurther, are, to quote a few names, Heinrich Bruning,the former German officer and Catholic Chancellor whofought and failed to keep Hitler out ; Dr. Hermann Rausch-ning, Hitler's former President of the Senate in Danzig,a former officer and Conservative politician, who, likeStrasser, turned to Hitler and then away from him ;Wilhelm Sollmann, one of the few clear heads in theold Reich German Socialist Party ; Lieutenant Com-mander Treviranus, a Conservative politician who wasone of Dr. Bruning's chief collaborators . All these aremen who have proved three things : their commonhumanity, their hatred of Hitlerism, and, in peace andwar alike, their German patriotism .

Such a group of men, if it could be brought togetherin a German National Council, would be the keyboard

228

FOURTH REICH?from which the development for the overthrow of Hitlerinside Germany could be controlled, when the war hasdeveloped further. Its other members, its active instru-ments, would be the men inside Germany who, like OttoStrasser's Black Front men, wait and long for the forma-tion of such an alternative authority .

At present its formation is delayed, first by the pro-tracted prelude to the war, and secondly by the rivalriesand cross-currents among the exiles themselves . Forthere is, among these exiles, another anti-Hitleristgroup which has its eye on the succession - the groupconsisting of the International Socialists, the Communists,the Jews, and assorted intellectuals . They would preferthe complete, and even annihilating defeat of Germany,her division into two or more pieces, and would not beaverse from the chaotic, Soviet Germany . There is awide gulf between the two groups, but their ideas andinterests occasionally interlap and hinder, as yet, theemergence of a clearly-defined German National Council .Moreover, one or two of the men Otto Strasser wouldlike to co-opt may be in two minds about that Goringpeace. The prospect of Germany being left in possessionof most of Hitler's ill-gotten gains, and also an intactarmy and air force, under Goring's leadership, can onlydazzle any German . Well, he thinks to himself, if theworld is as silly as all that, who am I to struggle further?

So that, as matters stand, Otto Strasser has as muchto fight against, in exile, as he ever had to fight againstin Germany. But if he succeed, what sort of a peacewould he work for? . This is what he says :

`The immediate evacuation of the Polish and Czecho-229

NEMESIS?slovak lands seized by Hitler, with the exception of theSudetenland and the northern part of the PolishCorridor, as a pledge of goodwill . Then, peace negotia-tions, a new Vienna Congress . For this conference, thefollowing proposals :`The non-recognition in principle of all Hitlerist

annexations and, in consequence, a referendum in twoof the territories seized by him which would not beautomatically and immediately evacuated - theSudetenland and Austria . Direct agreement betweenGermany and Poland about the Polish Corridor andDanzig. The help of German arms in the reconquest ofEastern Poland from the Bolshevists, in exchange for theretention by Germany of the northern part of theCorridor . A German proposal for the expulsion of theBolshevists from Finland and the Baltic area, as well asWhite Russia and the Ukraine, by a German-Polish army,with French and British collaboration in the command .War compensation to Poland and Czechoslovakia .Acknowledgment of Germany's old foreign loans, but notpayment of interest ; the reduction of the capital sum byyearly payments guaranteed by the leasing of a Germantobacco monopoly to an international company .'Only two of these points need any explanatory

comment.Otto Strasser envisages the immediate rendition,

before peace negotiations begin, and as a pledge of goodfaith, of those territories which Hitler annexed indefiance of his own oft-proclaimed theory of nationalindependence - the Czechoslovak and the Polish lands .That means, the lands inhabited by Czechs, Slovaks

230

FOURTH REICH?and Poles, not those parts of the former Czechoslovakand Polish States which were largely populated byGermans -the Sudetenland and the top part of themiscalled Corridor. To this extent, and also in thecase of Austria and Danzig, he thus thinks of retainingsomething of what Hitler took, against the qualificationthat a referendum would be held in Austria and theSudetenland and that the Poles would be helped toregain their eastern possessions in return for allowingGermany to retain the Corridor .

In respect of this last proposal, Otto Strasser wasalways an uncompromising enemy of any proposal for awar against Bolshevist Russia - as long as BolshevistRussia remained where she was and kept the peaceherself. He believes that by her recent actions she haslost the claim to be regarded as an enemy of aggression,and more particularly that she has come further intoEurope than is good for the peace of Europe, and shouldbe pressed back .

I have shown in this chapter how he hopes to see thiswar ended, and on what foundations he would, if hehad the power, set about to build his Fourth Reich .The peace he envisages should appeal to the sensitivefeelings of those good people in this country who believedthat Germany would never have made this war but forthe Versailles Treaty, which they never read ; thatGermany did not in that Treaty have `a fair deal' ; thatHitler `had a good case' in wanting slices of adjoiningcountries ; and that after this war there must not be `asecond Versailles' - not that they would read a secondVersailles Treaty anyway, but that doesn't matter .

23 1

NEMESIS?His proposals seem to me to be cleverly put together .

Our own Lord Lloyd, head of that British Council whichis said paternally to foster our relations with foreignpeoples, has in explaining `The British Case' said thatwe are fighting for the `independence of nations' but thatwe are pot fighting for `the Versailles frontiers' ; that is,we are not fighting for the one thing in the VersaillesTreaty worth fighting for. A seeker after the truth mightlook for a very small needle in several large haystackswith more hope of success than he would have of dis-covering, from this definition, what is The British Caseor what we are fighting for .

But Otto Strasser's proposals would even fit in withLord Lloyd's definition, which only shows that OttoStrasser is, as I have indicated in this book, a remarkableman, who can not only discover needles in haystacks buteven make camels leap gaily through their eyes .

j

I commend this conception of a European peace tocareful study. It would leave Germany still muchgreater than she was before 19 14. It would do the utmostustice, indeed more than justice to the principle of `theindependence of nations' in her own case . It would stillleave unanswered the question how, if the rulers ofBritain and France weree no more resolute in the yearsafter this war than they were after the last one, `theindependence of nations' could be ensured for such smallnations as those of the Czechs and Poles, who live onGermany's borders . But then, if our rulers in thoseyears should be no more resolute than in the past, thereis no hope of peace anyway, and the peace that comes ofthis war does not much matter .

232

FOURTH REICH?But if they should be resolute, then these proposals of

Otto Strasser could form the basis of a good peacebetween the nations, a lasting peace in Europe . That,again, would depend on conditions within the Germanhouse itself. What of them? How does Otto Strasserenvisage them? How would Germany be constructedand governed? What would his Fourth Reich be?

NOTE

I feel entitled to add a brief comment of my own toOtto Strasser's outline of a good peace for Europe, orat any rate to one point in it. He proposes that Germantroops should automatically withdraw, before peacenegotiations began, from a Little Czechoslovakia andLittle Poland, as a token of good faith and practicalacknowledgement that all Hitler's annexations wereimmoral in principle . These would leave Germany stillin possession of the following territories which Hitlerannexed : that part of Western Poland which Germanpropaganda had labelled the Polish Corridor, theSudeten-German part of Czechoslovakia, Danzig, andAustria. The feeling of the populations in these areaswould then be ascertained by plebiscites .

Of these, I would say that, in my view, such a proposalshould only be entertained for Danzig . The word`plebiscite' or `referendum' exercises a hypnotic effecton that part of the British character which is dignifiedby the name of `a sense of fair play' . Actually, there isno such thing as a free plebiscite or referendum in a

233

NEMESIS?country occupied by foreign troops, and it is mostdifficult to ensure one in a country not so occupied . Inthe case of Austria, I should say, on the strength of myknowledge of that country, that the withdrawal ofGerman troops from it should be as automatic andunconditional as in the case of Czechoslovakia . In thecase of Czechoslovakia, the `national independence' ofthat country, for which we are said to be fighting,cannot be ensured without possession of the ancientBohemian frontiers, which include the Sudetenland ;without them, the country cannot be defended, and thereal infamy of Munich was that it took from the Czechsthe possibility of defending themselves against the nextattack. Poland, though I do not see that it has a soundclaim to the eastern provinces annexed by SovietRussia, cannot remain independent without its outlet tothe sea. In fact, the garrulous ignoramuses who havebeen shaking their wise old heads in recent years aboutthe wickedness of the Versailles Treaty will find them-selves in much trouble when the European map has tobe redrawn again - for those frontiers were, andremain, about the best that can be devised in Europe .They were the only good things in the Versailles Treaty,and they were also the most important things in thattreaty.Also, if Germany is left in possession both of a

mighty army and of some of Hitler's ill-gotten gains,Germany will also be left with the feeling, once again,that she is the real winner of the war, that war pays .her,and that the best policy for her will be to start again,soon, on the chase after world domination . Her next

234

FOURTH REICH?ruler, whether he were Otto Strasser or any other, mightbe a man of the best will, but he would in such circum-stances soon be overthrown again by the warmakersinside Germany, as was Bruning, unless he himselfreverted to the policy of militarism and war . In thesecircumstances, such a peace as that outlined would bewise only if the counterbalancing certainty existed thatGermany would immediately be opposed by overwhelm-ing might if she attempted to upset the new treaty - andwhat hope can any man have of such certainty, afterthe events of the years 1933 to 1939?

I feel that if I were to expound these proposals ofOtto Strasser without comment I might be assumedto endorse them, and that would be the denial ofeverything I believe and have written about Germany .His proposals would, in effect, leave Germany greater,after two world wars, than she was in 194. That, inmy view, would so convince the Germans of the utility ofwar, and so steel them in the belief that their destiny isto conquer the world, that the last hope of peace andnational freedom in Europe would perish . The destrua-tion of Prussia would avail nothing to secure the peaceif Germany were shown that war pays . If I were OttoStrasser, and were negotiating peace, I should certainlytry for a settlement of this kind ; but if I were a Britishnegotiator I should not agree to it .

CHAPTER I I

`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'

OTTO STRASSER, a German exile now in his forty-thirdyear, has spent his manhood days, as I have shown, insearch of his `German socialism' . I have gone to greatpains to show what sort of a man he is, and shall now tryto show what sort of Socialism he seeks, because, in thecountry where this book is due to appear, many peopleare spellbound or fascinated by words, and do nottrouble to examine the things they describe .

This is particularly the case with the word Socialist .The Island Race, as one of our foremost satirists currentlysays, is mentally in its fourteenth year, or thereabouts,and the majority of people cannot picture anythingother, behind the word Socialist, than an unmoneyedman who wants to take their money from them . Mostof them do not even think as far as that . They just hatethe word, and do not trouble about its meaning .

Otto Strasser, as this story has shown, had his Socialismpartly bequeathed to him and partly bred in him by theworld he grew up in . The war developed it : he detested thebullying brutes who put him through his first drills andto the present day retains his loathing of this class ofman, whom he sees incorporated in the leaders of theNational Socialist regime ; but at the same time he tookwith him from the war an affectionate respect for theOfficers' Corps of the old Imperial German Army and a

236

`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'deep sympathy for the doubts and perplexities of his men .He never for a moment saw the hope of his GermanSocialism in the Communist Party : indeed, he could not,for that Party is an international one and his Socialismis a patriotic Socialism; and he fought to turn theCommunists out of his native Bavaria . Then, in searchof his German Socialism, he went in turn to the SocialistParty and to the National Socialist Party, and left both indisgust .He claims for himself the name of a revolutionary

Socialist. But in one of his books I noticed that he calledhimself, just once, a Conservative revolutionary, and Ithink this name, coupled with the story of his life,actually gives the British reader a better idea of the manhe is .

His loathing of those parade-ground tyrants of 1914is equalled by his deep hatred of officialdom ; he sees nomerit in dispossessing one class of over-propertied andover-privileged people in order to put an aristocracy ofofficials in its place, as the Bolshevists have done, as theaverage Socialist would do . This is to exchange onetyranny for another, without improving the lot of thesubmerged masses .

He sees no remedy for the social evils of to-day, nohope of social progress, in the simple confiscation ofwealth from the wealthy, in making all poor and callingthe result, which in practice is one nest-feathering gangin place of another nest-feathering gang, the Dictator-ship of the Proletariat . On the contrary, that is thenegation of Socialism as he understands it .He sees Socialism in the gradual upraising of the

237

NEMESIS?unpropertied masses towards the level of those morefortunate ; not in the violent depression of the propertiedclasses towards the level of the proletariat . Not theenthronement, real or illusory, of the proletariat (whichmy dictionary describes as `the lowest class of the com-munity') but the abolition of proletarianism is the aim hefixes his gaze on . To give this lowest class, this submergedmass, the feeling of independence, of co-ownership, ofco-responsibility in the State is the ideal he fights for .Not to put a new despot, the Socialist State with its hordeof limpet-officials, in the place of the other despots -Kaisers, Hitlers, money-magnates and the like - but toreduce the divisions between all classes is the goal .Otto Strasser differs from most other aspirants to

mould the future of Germany in that he has a detailedplan of his German Socialism, which has been on paperand in print for ten years. It is called The Structure ofGerman Socialism, and he has never seriously modified it .This is the plan which, as he says, came to him, completein all its details, almost vision-like, during a long railwayjourney between Berlin and Munich . His `GermanSocialism' is therefore no nebulous thing, but a politicalprogramme which all may study, and if he wins throughto power in Germany it will be of the first importance .For this reason, I am going to give a summary of it here .

`Socialism', as it has been put into practice, wholly orin part, in various countries since the war, has, as Iimagine, repelled most men who in their hearts long forsomething, as I do, which this word should represent .The Moscow form of Socialism, which has put theRussian masses under the oppression of an imported

238

`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'alien regime for twenty years and has worsened insteadof bettering their lot, is repulsive enough to be disgusting .The Socialist parties in other countries have mostlydegenerated into bodies of mutually squabbling pro-fessors and trade union leaders whose domestic andforeign policies cannot usually be distinguished from thepolicies of the Conservative and other parties in thesecountries. Miss Jennie Lee's book, Tomorrow is a NewDay, faithfully reproduces the feelings of an undeviatingand idealistic mind about the degeneration of such aparty, the British Socialist or Labour Party .

But even if such parties as these had untrammelledpower to-morrow and Socialized everything, it is mostdifficult to imagine that any real improvement in socialconditions would result . As far as the human mind canforesee, this would again be the regime of taking fromthose that have, without giving to those who have not,and I am not even sure about the taking from thosethat have.

In Berlin, predominantly Socialist rule meant chieflyan enormous increase in the Jewish influence in thecity and the grant of `freedom' in the sense of uncheckedlicence and libertinism ; that is, there was unlimitedfreedom for the exploiters of human misery . A greatimprovement in social conditions, there was not . Theonly Socialists, in my experience, who really did any-thing to improve the lot of the masses, who actually didthings which I recognize as Socialist - that is, for thegood of the whole community - were the Socialists ofVienna, with their magnificent workers' settlements .

I think, after all that I have seen of politics and239

NEMESIS?politicians all over Europe in the last twelve years, I amthe last man to develop a facile enthusiasm for thetheories or programme of any one politician, old or new .

Rather have I tended, after watching the brewing ofthis war for so many years, to think that they were allalike, from the politician of the poorest Balkan peasantcountry to the politician of the wealthiest Western State,men without steadfastness or truth towards their country-men, and I held them all jointly responsible for theGadarene gallop. Not one of them but could be con-victed out of his own mouth of preaching one thing anddoing another . Hardly one of them who, in the momentof crisis, played a man's part . Strange that he who, insuch a moment, played the manliest part was one of thepoorest politicians, in the tactical sense, of them all -Kurt von Schuschnigg . His bearing on that day makeshim a greater man than all the rest .

But I, as compere and commentator, do find OttoStrasser's German Socialism a most stimulating andprovoking idea. We do not know yet whether worsetyrannies and greater chaos are to come out of this war,or whether it will at last reopen the way to reason andhumanity. It may lead him to power and I commendit to the closest study . I can only give it in outline, andhere it isOtto Strasser begins his `German Socialism' with a

brief philosophical study of the roots of his thought . Hehas no theory of a superior race of Nordic supermen ;he protests vigorously (in 1930!) against `the idolatry ofrace' . He believes the peoples of Europe (from which heexcludes Russia) to be a mixture, in varying proportions,

240

`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'of four or five races ; this at any rate is the verdict ofscience .

Out of these racially-mixed groups, all interrelated,landscape, climate and history have made the various`peoples' . And growing consciousness of their 'ownindividuality has made of some of these peoples `nations' .The World War, says Otto Strasser, fashioned theGerman people into a nation, the latest of the nationsthus to take shape in the area of what we call, withdubious right, `Western civilization' .This brief summary shows how different is Otto

Strasser's view of the `family of Europe' (his ownexpression) from that of Hitler, and how much more akinto the feeling of well-meaning men .

In the history of the Europe that he thus pictures as acommunity of interrelated nations, Otto Strasser per-ceives a rhythm of recurrent epochs, epochs of com-munal or belonging-together feeling, and of individualistor egoist feeling . He sees such epochs recurring everyhundred or hundred-and-fifty years, from the Reforma-tion around 1500, to the English Revolution of 1640-49,and the French Revolution of 1789-99 .In each of these Revolutions he sees the recurrent

conflict between these two primitive instincts - theinstinct of self-preservation, and the instinct of preserva-tion of the species . For him, the first of these is identicalwith that which we call Liberalism -each man forhimself. The second, he identifies with . that which hecalls Conservatism - each man for the community .

The pendulum of history, he writes, swings continuouslyto and fro between these ideas of self and species. The

241

NEMESIS?English Revolution, he says, brought the victory of theConservative, the French Revolution the victory of theLiberal, idea . The epoch of Liberalism, he wrote (in1930), is inevitably approaching its end, and carryingwith it that of Socialism as it was then understood, forthe Socialist Sehnsucht, or yearning, first manifested itselfat a time when the Liberal idea of each-man-for-himselfwas in its heyday and took so much from Liberalism -for instance, internationalism, the doctrine of the class-struggle and materialism - that it was bound to founderwith it. (In 1930, when he wrote this, the forecast was afarsighted one; the disasters suffered by the SocialistParties in Germany, Austria and Spain subsequentlyconfirmed it.)

Thus Otto Strasser sees a new epoch of the secondidea, each man for the community, or the preservationof the species, approaching. Since 1914, he writes, thependulum of history has been swinging over towards anew era of Conservatism and its associated ideas -Socialism, patriotism and national idealism -and theviolent eruption of these ideas in Germany will be theGerman Revolution .

Starting from these convictions, Otto Strasser sees theapproaching end of capitalism, as we have known it,which he identifies with the Liberal era . (The readermust differentiate between his correct use of the terms`Conservative era' and `Liberal era' and the current use ofthese words in relation to two parties in England whichseem to have no perceptible difference of principle orpolicy .)

Capitalism he regards as the child and the economic242

`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'expression of the Liberal era, and he finds the economicsystem which existed, in Germany, before the Liberal erato have much in common with his Socialism, just as hefinds Socialism, as it has been preached and partly triedin Europe in our time, to be but another form ofcapitalism -- State-capitalism. The armies of unem-ployed, alone, are proof enough that capitalism has failed,he says. It is the ideal economic expression of `Liberal-ism' - of the theory of each-man-for-himself, of thefree-fox-in-the-free-henroost, of the democratic exploiterdemocratically exploiting the democratic exploitees in thename of Liberty. Its motto is `the sanctity of privateproperty', and the condition of its existence is that four-fifths of the people should have no property . The publicmind instinctively feels that a system is immoral andunjust under which the community is divided intoexploiters and exploited, and the overwhelming majorityof the people dispossessed .

Thus Otto Strasser in his `German Socialism', in his`Fourth Reich', would abolish the `sacred rights ofprivate property' - in his own way .

How would he set about it?He makes a sharp distinction between what he calls

`Monopoly goods' (that is, the land, coal, other productsof the earth, and the means of production) which areonly existent in limited quantities ; and goods which canbe produced without limit . The existence of the people,he writes, is based first and foremost on these monopoly-goods, and the fact that they are in private ownership,and that the owner may do with them what he will,places the population in a relationship of dependence to

243

NEMESIS?him which is `the real curse of capitalism' . He wouldtherefore abolish private ownership of land, or mineralresources and the products of the earth, and of the meansof production .

This he calls the main demand, the cornerstone, of his`German Socialism'. It is, as he emphasizes, identicalwith the demand of Marxist Socialism, - but his pro-posal for the further development is entirely different .That is where `German Socialism' comes in .

His solution is derived from study of German historyand the German character . It is not, therefore, anattempt to force an economic theory down the Germanthroat; but an attempt to distil from the German natureand its traditions a practical economic system whichsuits the German .

The German, says Strasser, carries deep in his soul theSehnsucht, the longing for an independent and creativeexistence . The lack of all means and all hope of fulfillingthat Sehnsucht is the very cause of the dissatisfaction andaimlessness which the life of the German of to-dayreveals. (This was written in 1930, and since then Hitlerhas given the German something to think about ; butStrasser's whole argument, as I have explained, is thatHitler simply diverted the Sehnsucht towards rearmament,militarism and war, and that the hopelessness of winningthe war will now soon send it streaming back towards thedemand for Socialism .) The German - says Strasser -suffers under the feeling of his indigent existence, hisunpropertied loot, the hopelessness of his old age and thedependence of his present .

This ineradicable Sehnsucht, writes Strasser, can only be244

`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'cured by ending his proletarian state, and that is onlypossible if every German comes to share in `the sacredright of private property', because this feeling of owner- .ship alone gives that independence of thought, feeling ofresponsibility and creative energy which allow a man tofeel that he is a man .

This brings Otto Strasser to the two first definitions ofhis German Socialism in relation to property . Theyseem contradictory at first sight, but are extremelyinteresting on closer examination .No German shall in future own as private property

land and estate, mineral resources, or the means ofproduction ;Every German shall come to possession of land and

estate, mineral resources, and the means of production .(The distinction between `ownership', which is a

conception without any limits, and `possession', whichsignifies an occupancy subject to limits, is important forthe further understanding of this cardinal tenet of`German Socialism' .)

Otto Strasser's solution of this main problem is theintroduction of the hereditary fief, or fee . This is hisown idea, derived from German history before theLiberal era, and is to my mind a most interesting attemptto devise a system which would retain the merits of theSocialist idea without its chief disadvantages .

`The Nation, that is, the community of Germans'-continues his programme -'becomes the sole owner ofland and estate, mineral resources and means of pro-duction, the management of which will be entrusted toindividuals according to their ability and merits .'

245

NEMESIS?

By this proposal, Otto Strasser aims at finding areasonable and practical middle-way between theunbridled right of one man to exploit, close, mortgage,or sell abroad, say, a great coalfield or coalmine, ofimmense value to the community, and the monopolistic,official-ridden Socialist State of the Marxists andCommunists . His proposal is, of course, a reversion to afeudal practice, with the State or the community of thenation, in place of the prince or baron .

`To own a thing' - he writes - `means to be able todo anything you like with it - to sell it, to damage it,to destroy it . To possess it means to administer it, tohave its use and enjoyment, to hold it in usufruct, onbehalf of another, namely, the "Owner".'

`The Owner will in future be exclusively the com-munity, the Nation . But the Nation, through its outwardform, the State, will not itself operate or manage ; it willgive the land to individuals or groups in Erblehen(hereditary fief), to operate .'

Here, then, is the solution which Otto Strasser offersfor the age-old problem of the haves and the have-nots,of the wealthy few and the penurious many, of thecommunity and the parasites . I find it extraordinarilyinteresting, and I believe many men who search for apractical Socialism, but see nothing to attract themeither in Marxist or Moscovite Socialism, will also find itworthy of long thought . I particularly like its joining-upwith old tradition and with old historical forms .

The abolition of the legal conception of `the sanctity ofprivate property', and the substitution, in the thingsvital for the nation, of this system of the hereditary fief,

24.6

`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'Otto Strasser describes as the foundation stone of hiswhole `Structure of German Socialism' . It alone, he says,enables that marriage of private profit and generalwelfare which fufils the Socialist Sehnsucht and does notoutrage the laws of human nature . The capitalist systemwrote its own death warrant when it made it impossiblefor the masses to lead their own lives in it, to progress, tocome to possessions . The division of all possessionsamong the community of the nation, whether in indi-vidual or in collective holding, is necessary to abolishthe evils to which capitalism has led . The system of thehereditary fief, which for centuries was the legal formof the German economic system, alone offers thispossibility.`German Socialism', says Otto Strasser, `is at one with

State Capitalism, to-day miscalled State Socialism, in thedemand for the transfer of the entire rights of ownershipto the community, as represented by the State, but it ispassionately opposed to the operation of concerns by theState or its officials, because this would be the oppositeof Socialism . It would neither raise the masses from theirproletarian state, nor unloose their creative energy, norgive them a feeling of responsibility. On the contrary, itwould aggravate all these existent evils, and the workerswould have even less rights in relation to their employer-the State -than to the private capitalist . And Iknow all too well' - he continues - `the annihilatingeffect of officialdom upon the individual . I know so wellthe longing for independence of the German peasant andthe middle-class German, and I should regard anyreform as disastrous which condemned this striving for

247

NEMESIS?independence to be crushed under the steamroller ofofficialdom . I see the real torment of a proletarianexistence in this deficient, or eternally repressed, urge forindependence, and hold the most important task to bethe creation of this feeling of independence for theworker, not the worsening of the lot of the peasant andmiddle-class man .'Moreover, under State Socialism - which, as Otto

Strasser correctly points out, is really State Capitalism,one big capitalist in place of the few hundred or thousandwho actually rule the countries to-day - the worker haseven less rights than under private capitalism (JewishBolshevy has clearly proved this), for the State is at onceemployer and lawmaker . Under private capitalism theState always has to keep up some pretence of im-partiality, for the worker is after all a citizen, taxpayerand soldier. This fact, Otto Strasser continues, therevolutionary Marxists try to confute by representing theState as `the dictatorship of the Proletariat', by pre-tending that the State is identical with the workers andthat there can thus be no antagonism between them .Actually, their system leads to the rule of a newprivileged class -officialdom -in place of the oldprivileged classes- aristocrats, money-barons, tsars,and the like .

This argument of Strasser's is correct . I have seen thething in practice in Moscow . The working masses therehave been driven deeper into the mire of ignorance andoppression than they were before, which is almostincredible and just shows what a Soviet State can doif it tries .

248

`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'The only class in the land that enjoys privilege and

preferment and perquisites and bodily comfort is that ofthe new tyrants, the officials ; the majority of these areJews, and Jews who not even by the longest stretch ofthe imagination can be called Russian . They are theequivalents of those recent newcomers to Britain whoare already `one hundred per cent British', whose in-complete knowledge of our language and ineradicabledifference from ourselves is shown in the magazines andbooks they publish and the plays and films they make .Bolshevist Russia offers, I should think, the most astonish-ing example in history of an alien tyranny introducedinto the land by sleight-of-hand and masquerading assomething Russian. Even the general who led the un-fortunate Russian soldiers in the farcical and calamitousoperations against Finland, Stern, was a foreign Jew ;he is a poor advertisement for that superior ability whichthe apologists of anti-Gentilism claim to be the chiefattribute of the Jews .I have tried at some length to make clear Otto

Strasser's inveterate hostility, in his conception of `aGerman Socialism', to the idea that social evils can becured, the lot of the peasant and worker bettered, and thegeneral condition of the whole community improved,simply by the creation of some monstrous thing called`The State', which is supposed to symbolize the libera-tion and triumph of the submerged masses, but actuallyis as great a tyrant as any other .

For him, that inflated official-State is just a super-capitalist; and it represents for him the triumph, not ofthe submerged masses, but of the classes he particularly

249

NEMESIS?hates from his parade-ground days - the mean-souledand bullying nitwit dressed in a little brief authority,the ignorant clown who thinks himself a little godbecause he has the might of the State behind him, isundismissible, and has a pension waiting for him at theend of his service . `Fascism and Communism alike', saysOtto Strasser, `vie with each other in the glorification ofthe State, in the repression of economic and individualindependence, in the exaggeration of the might andsuccess of organization, decrees, umpteen-year-plansand, particularly, the police!'

So, as the foundation of his German Socialism, OttoStrasser lays down his chief proposals : the cancellationof the dogma of `the sanctity of private property' ; thetransfer to the State, as representative of the communityof all Germans, of the title of owner of the things mostprecious to the nation - land and estate, mineralresources, and the means of production; and the re-conferment, upon the previous owners, of the hereditaryusufruct of their possessions, which they would hold andadminister in fee from the State .A main argument in favour of his plan is that the

usufructuaries, though their occupancy is hereditary,would be unable to sell, mortgage, or otherwise alienatetheir possessions. In this manner, the joint ownershipof the community would be safeguarded, and the mostvital possessions of the nation secured against the secret,sinister and often anti-patriotic operations of big banking,international finance, and stock-market manipulation .A main aim of Strasser's `German Socialism' is to

promote the back-to-the-land movement in Germany250

`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'(in England, incidentally, this is an even more urgentneed, but no hope of it seems to offer) and to check theprocess of over-industrialization, the growth of giganticmachine-slave-hives. `The Liberal-capitalist and Liberal-Marxist ideal of a 'modern mammoth factory and amaximum output of goods', he writes, `must give way tothe Conservative ideal of a free existence used to thefull . . . Conservative thought cannot regard a process asretrograde because it will lead to a certain twilight ofthe mechanical gods . The time is coming for the Germanto overthrow the tyranny of the mechanical age, the ruleof the machine, and to force mechanics and the machineback to their due part of servant, from which, to hismisfortune, they have been freed . . . For the conservativerevolutionary, work is but the means to the maintenanceof life .' Among other things, Otto Strasser would transferthe capital of Germany from Berlin or any other of thenerve-destroying mammoth settlements of present-dayGermany to some such centre of history and tradition asRegensburg or Goslar .

I have explained, as best I can in a brief summary,the basic thought of Otto Strasser's `German Socialism',which culminates in that stimulating idea of the Erblehen,or hereditary fief. Now for the way he would in practicecarry it out .

First, agriculture and the land, which are in Germany,and indeed in any sound-thinking State, the bases of allreform .

All land and estate would pass into the ownership ofthe community, represented by the State, and be re-conferred, in hereditary fief, upon men able to work it,

251

NEMESIS?at the proposal of local Peasants' Councils . The govern-ing principle of the distribution would be that no manshould have more land than he could himself farm orless than is essential for the maintenance of himself andhis family and a reasonable surplus .

Here Otto Strasser justifies his claim to be called arevolutionary Socialist, or, perhaps still more, a Con-servative revolutionary. For his proposal would meanthe confiscation of the great estates and their divisionamong a small peasantry holding them in hereditary feefrom the State . In practice, this would affectt chiefly thegreat landlords of Eastern Germany ; in the rest ofGermany, a deep-rooted, long-standing, sturdy, land-owning peasantry already exists, freemen save for debt .

In this proposal Otto Strasser attacks the forces whichhave led Europe from war to war, which brought Hitlerto power, and which have caused the present conflict .He also stakes his own political future, all his hopes, onthe turn of a coin . If he were to compromise on thisissue, as he has always refused to compromise, all roadsto power in Germany might quickly and smoothly opento him, when the Nazi regime begins to disintegrate. Ifhe remains uncompromising, the most powerful groupin Germany will oppose his appearance in the politicalscene tooth and nail, with every weapon at its command .But he believes that the German social Sehnsucht im-placably demands this reform and will never rest untilit is finally carried out .Remember that these Prussian magnates, the great

landowning nobility of Eastern Germany, overthrewChancellor Bruning, the man who might have brought

252

'A GERMAN SOCIALISM'Germany through to peaceful and prosperous col-laboration in the family of Europe, on this very issue . He,too, wished to divide those vast estates, many of themhopelessly insolvent and deeply indebted to the State('Help for the Farmer!') and to settle ex-service men onthem. Indeed, this was but the fulfilment of a promisemade by President, and Field Marshal, von Hindenburgto the soldiers he had led back from the World War whenhe offered himself to them as candidate for the Presidency .But when he became President, those Eastern Germansquires clubbed together and bought a great EasternGerman estate for Hindenburg, who thus became one ofthemselves . And when Bruning proposed to partitiontheir insolvent estates, they whispered : `This is rankBolshevism' to Hindenburg, who turned on Bruning,threw him out, and made Franz von Papen, the scion ofheavy industry, Chancellor in his place .

That began the period of political chaos in Germanywhich ended in Hitler's triumph . But before his triumphanother Chancellor, General von Schleicher, again triedto do that very thing, in the hope of rallying around himselfenough Germans to rule against Hitler, and to vanquishHitler. Again the selfsame thing happened . The squireswhispered `Bolshevism' in the ageing President's ear,and out went Schleicher (who was afterwards shot) andin came Hitler .

So that in taking-up this gauntlet, Otto Strasser isdoing a very daring thing . I explain it at length becauseit is the key, to the understanding of the whole Germansituation and the test of his sincerity.Hitler, even before he came to power, had ensured

253

NEMESIS?himself the support of those powerful East Elbian squiresin a decisive moment by cancelling that item of theoriginal National Socialist programme, the famousTwenty-Five Points, which demanded the confiscation ofthe big estates . When he came to power he enacted anErbhofgesetz, or Hereditary Farmholding law, whichalone, in all his legislation, bore some faint resemblanceto his Socialist programme and to Otto Strasser's plansfor the reinvigoration of the German countryside. Itestablished a system of inalienable, hereditary ownershipamong the peasants ; butamong the peasants this alreadyexisted in practice, as far as the present capitalist orderallows it to exist . What he did not do was to removethose things which in practice work against the establish-ment of a sound, prosperous, father-to-son peasantry .He left the capitalist order untouched, so that the peasantremains, not really a freeman, but the slave of the creditshe has to raise from some bank or moneylender in thenearest town. He left unchanged the prevailing taxationsystem, that in its endless complication and onerousnessdemands cash payments from the peasant which re-peatedly plunge him in indebtedness . He left unmitigatedthe burden of mortgage on farms which are supposed tobe free, inalienable and bequeathable . And above all,he protected the great estates and thus destroyed thehopes of the peasant's second and third sons of achievinga peasant independence for themselves .

Thus Otto Strasser puts in the forefront of his pro-gramme, of his `German Socialism', this greatest andmost dynamite-laden of reforms . A reform that Hitlerpromised and jettisoned with every other promise he

254

`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'ever made. A reform that a Conservative and CatholicChancellor sought to make, so that he is now these manyyears in exile. A reform that a Prussian General soughtto make, so that he is now dead . A reform that theGerman mind undoubtedly longs for.

As I say, that he should uncompromisingly present it isthe test and proof of Otto Strasser's sincerity . For if heabandoned it, how much financial and political support,how much friendly regard and influential backing hecould find - even in his exile .

The peasant, farmer, smallholder, or what you will,who under Otto Strasser's system would thus hold hisland in fee from the State, and bequeath it to a son athis death, would pay to the State one single due - atithe, payable in cash or kind . In practice, the reformwould mean that the vast majority of peasants wouldremain on their present holdings, for of the 5,og6,533holdings counted in Germany at the 1925 census, only18,668 came into the category of great estates ; theycomprised, that is, Zoo hectares or more (a hectare is21 acres) . But these 18,668 landowners held betweenthem nearly a fifth of all German agricultural land . Thisis the land which would be taken for the creation of newpeasant-holdings

Under this reform, says Otto Strasser, the great bulkof German peasants would thus remain in occupation oftheir present farms . But they would for the first timebecome freemen - because the abolition of the legalstatus of `private ownership', and the substitution for itof the legal status of `hereditary fief' held from theState, would logically and necessarily carry with it the

255

NEMESIS?cancellation of mortgages . Land held in fee from theState is of necessity non-mortgageable .

Thus the peasant, freed from the burden of interest-payment, would, though no longer the private owner ofhis property, for the first time become a freeman, in freeenjoyment of it. This liberation of German agriculturefrom debt, and the impossibility of incurring new debt, issimilarly a major piece in the structure of `GermanSocialism' . To preserve the creditors from ruin, existingmortgages would be exchanged for non-interest-bearingbonds, paying three-per-cent amortization annually,and these would be financed from the proceeds of thetithe-payments . The dispossessed great landownerswould remain in possession of a sufficiently large piece ofland, and would also receive compensation from themortgage-elimination fund .

The process, as Otto Strasser conceives it, would takeseveral years to complete, but he thinks that its practicalfulfilment would be relatively simple .So much for agriculture, the rock on which every

well-found and soundly-constructed State must be built .All these ideas would have been described by Hitler,and were so described by him, as the ramblings of an`intellectuall crank', as Marxism, Bolshevism, Liberalism,Democracy, diabolo and whatnot. These are the wordswith which cheats and halfwits always seek to defeat thestrivings of honest men . I leave it to the reader to com-pare the two men, their ideas, their works, and their lives .

What of industry? That, as Otto Strasser writes, is avery different question, and one which needs quiteanother solution . Agricultural undertakings rest mainly

256

'A GERMAN SOCIALISM'upon the labour of one man and his kin, industrial under-takings upon the collaboration of the owner and hisworkers . Agriculture depends upon the land andclimatic conditions ; industry upon the supply of rawmaterials and their distribution . The sources of raw-material supply are the German earth itself, for some ofthem, and imports, for others. In order efficiently toexploit, without plundering, the one, and adequately toobtain the other, Otto Strasser's `German Socialism'demands an economic and trade policy of the greatestpossible self-sufficiency, in Germany, and a foreign trademonopoly, for the supervision of exports and imports,within reasonable limits . By these means the State wouldgain sufficient influence over the supply of raw materialsto safeguard the interests of the "nation.

For that reason, the State would be represented, withthe other participants, in industrial undertakings . Atrinity of interests exists, says Otto Strasser - theinterests of the owner, the workers, and the community ;none of these has the right to absolute authority -not the owner, as in the capitalist system ; nor theState, as in Fascism (though in practice the uncheckedrule of the owner continues under that system) ; nor theworkers, as in Communism (though that again is but apretence, and the real rulers are the State and itsofficials) .The community, as represented by the State, would, in

Otto Strasser's German Socialist Reich, become theowner of industrial undertakings, which, like agriculturalland, would be held in hereditary fee from it . It wouldre-confer the undertaking upon the owner, as usufruc-

257

NEMESIS?tuary, and, in place of the present-day taxes, receivefrom the earnings of the undertaking a single payment,assessed from time to time, which would go to cover theexpenditure of the State and would have precedenceover profits and reserves .

Thus in industry a common-ownership order, equallyshared between State, usufructuary and workers, wouldbe introduced . The head of the undertaking would underthat order, as now, depend upon his energy and ingenuityfor a greater or smaller income . He, the community, andhis workers would hold equal shares in the management,capital and profits of the undertaking. From their third-share, the workers would derive a payment, of necessitynot very large, additional to their wages ; but they wouldhave the feeling of co-ownership and co-responsibility.They would be raised above the status of machine-servingslaves . Otto Strasser writes that this system would, in hisopinion, breed a class of responsible industrial leaders,in sharp contrast to the capitalist privateer of to-day, onthe one hand; and on the other hand . the present massof dispossessed, propertyless, dependent, to-be-seen-and-not-heard class of wage-bondmen would give way to aclass of free workmen, who would enjoy the status of co-ownership and of co-responsibility for the prosperity ofthe undertaking .Otto Strasser explains in this way the differences

between his `German Socialism', as it would affectindustry, and `Capitalism' and `Socialism', in the con-temporary understandings of the words, respectively .

It differs from capitalism in that the private ownershipof the means of production would be abolished, and these

258

`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'could neither be bought nor sold, but only conferred byand acquired from the State in fee ; so that great posses-sions in money or goods, though possible and desirable,could nevertheless not lead to the evils which distinguishcapitalism unchecked ; the workers and the State wouldbe equal partners with the head or heads of a concern,who would thus not be unfettered `capitalists' butusufructuaries ; the obligation to sound economic methodsand consideration for the interests of the entire com-munity would be safeguarded by the two-thirds majorityof the State and the workers in relation to the heads ofthe concern .

But it differs also from Marxist Socialism in that thepersonal initiative of the leaders of industry wouldremain, and be limited only by the needs of the entirecommunity; within the limits of the State's economicpolicy, the competition of individual concerns wouldremain; the identification of `the State' with `industry',or of State-officials with the leadership of industry, wouldbe avoided, and so would the exposure of the workers toarbitrary exploitation by `the State' .

In industry, as in agriculture, the question arises of thepractical fulfilment of these proposals . Their fulfilmentdepends first and foremost on Otto Strasser, or a manlike him, coming to power in Germany, and then on thealteration of the laws governing Germany's' economicsystem - on the abolition, that is, of the legal principleof private ownership unrestricted by any national, social,moral or other considerations whatever .

Once that fence has been taken, Otto Strasser foreseesno great difficulty in putting his `German Socialism' into

259

NEMESIS?practice in industry, as in agriculture . `The simplestmethod', he writes, `would be to transform all industrialconcerns and great undertakings employing more than acertain number of hands into joint-stock companies ; thetripartitioning of the property, its management andprofits would then be possible without further difficulty .But these "shares" would be quite different from the shareswe know to-day. They would be shares inscribed in theNational Register of Property, exclusively in the name ofthe holder; they would be neither saleable nor mort-gageable, in accordance with their nature of propertyheld-in-fee from the State .'

The objection most frequently raised to his proposalsfor industry is, says Otto Strasser, that under his systemnew capitalists would arise. But this objection, heanswers, overlooks the decisive difference between acapitalist, the unhampered money-privateer, and hispotential works-leader, or usufructuary. Above allthings, it overlooks the fact that `Capitalism', whichmeans economic and financial power based on theunrestricted ownership of monopoly-goods, could notreappear, for not even the richest man could buy sharesin an undertaking, since these would only be granted-in-fee from the State. He could buy unlimited quantitiesof those goods which can be produced in unlimitedquantities, say toothpaste; but he could not buy thosethings which only existed in limited quantities, that is,land and estate, mineral resources, and the means ofproduction.After agriculture and industry, Otto Strasser, in

planning the structure of his `German Socialism',260

`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'approaches his third main problem - that of the smallman, the master craftsman and tradesman . Here again,he finds a new and different problem and offers a newsolution .Under this heading come `the independent small

concerns, which employ relatively few hands - clerks,shop-assistants, workmen, apprentices - and these havefair prospect of becoming masters themselves . Thesesmall undertakings differ fundamentally from the greatconcerns. In the great enterprises, the prosperity of theworks, and therewith the, wellbeing or illbeing of eachindividual worker, depends on the collaboration of all ;but in the small ones this depends on the personality ofthe master' .

Thus, in the big undertakings Otto Strasser would, asI have shown, give an equal voice in all decisions to allthree parties concerned - the leader or leaders, theworkers, and the State - but in the small ones he wouldleave the management entirely in the hands of the master.`But', he says, `in a Socialist system such a degree ofpersonal freedom is possible only if on the other hand theindividual is subjected to obligations which safeguardthe interests of the whole community .' To this end, OttoStrasser proposes the revival, in a form suitable to ourtimes, of another good and well-proven German institu-tion - the Guilds .

Under Otto Strasser's `German Socialism', handicrafts-men, or if you will manual workers, traders, and men ofthe professions, would be organized in Guilds, whichwould receive from the State certain rights and inreturn undertake the collection from their members of

261

NEMESIS?the sum assessed as the contribution of the Guilds to theState's expenditure . The Guilds would bestow themaster's title and the right to practise a calling, craft orprofession. They would also decide how many appren-tices might be employed, and the like .

`By these means it would be made impossible for anyindividual ruthlessly to promote his own especialinterests or to misuse his economic freedom .' Under thissystem, says Otto Strasser, the workers in the small con-cerns would not, like those in the great ones, have a sharein the ownership, profit and operation of it. They wouldthus seem to be put at a disadvantage ; but in practicethis is not so . As employees and apprentices they wouldhave the certainty that, if they passed the necessary tests,they could themselves become masters .

`The supply of candidates, and their direction throughthe schools or universities towards the callings wherethey were most needed, would need to be regulated inaccordance with demand and with the interests of thecommunity; but such intervention with freedom ofchoice as this would entail would be compensated by thefact that assured existences would be available for thosewho sought them and that this intervention would not befrom the State but by these self-governing bodies them-selves, who would only themselves be subject to aminimum of supervision by the State .'

(It is a most interesting point, which I think deservesto be recorded here, that in one branch of German pro-fessional life the ideas advocated by Otto Strasser alreadyexist in practice, or rather, have never ceased to exist .This is in the profession of the apothecaries . Only the

262

'A GERMAN SOCIALISM'State can in Germany confer the right to open anapothecary's business, and these cannot be bought, sold,founded, bequeathed or inherited . On the death ofa holder, the title reverts to the State, for bestowmentupon the next candidate .)

The practical fulfilment of his proposals for the organ-ization of small concerns and of the professions in Guilds,says Otto Strasser, would best be achieved by taking upsuch threads of the old Guild system as still remain inGermany. Here again he sees reinvigoration for a mostimportant branch of Germany's economic life in theabolition of the fiendishly complicated and onerousburden of taxes as it has taken its satanic shape in ourmodern life; the Guilds would pay a lump sum to theState, recoverable in one contribution from theirmembers.

The legal principle of unrestricted private ownership,under Otto Strasser's `German Socialism', would remainintact in respect of house property - with the sole ex-ception that any newly-built property would arise onground not acquired freehold, but held, as in the othercases, in fee from the State .

I have given a brief, but I believe sufficient, descriptionof Otto Strasser's `German Socialism', of the economicsystem he would build in his Fourth Reich, of the justsocial order which he envisages .

The question follows, what would be the politicalstructure of that State? Would it be a - monarchy, arepublic, a centralized or a decentralized State? Hereagain I find much that is of the greatest interest in OttoStrasser's plans . Those who now read his theory of the

263

NEMESIS?State should always bear in mind that it was put onpaper ten years ago, and this lends the more importanceto the fact that some of its ideas are those which the out-break of the war, and the uncertainty of our future, havenow, ten years later, caused vaguely to take shape and tosurge and simmer in the minds of men in many countries :

First, the principles on which Otto Strasser wouldfound the political structure of his German SocialistFourth Reich . His governing principle, his golden rule,he says - and in this book I have shown how he came tothis conviction-, would be at all costs to avoid the demonof officialdom, of an enormous bureaucracy wedged inarm-chairs from which nothing can dislodge it . This isalmost an obsession with him, and a healthy obsession .

Secondly, - and this is particularly interesting, asdating from the time of the breach with Hitler - thefullest possible self-government in every branch of Ger-man life. Farmers, and not officials, should decide how tomilk cows ; master-bootmakers, and not officials, shoulddecide how to make boots; master-butchers, and notofficials, should decide when to slaughter cattle ; doctors,and not officials, should decide what reforms are neededin the medical profession; Saxons, and not Prussianofficials, should decide Saxon affairs . (Hitler has im-posed a horde of Prussians upon his fellow-Austrians .)

Thirdly, federation . This is the exact opposite ofHitler's theory, which he has put into practice, of central-ization, of the merging of all power in the hands of oneman, so that his word is law to the uttermost corners ofthe land, one capital, one parliament, and so on .

Otto Strasser would, destroy the last vestiges of this264

`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'system (his plan, as I say, dates from 1930, long beforeHitler built his Third Reich) and build anew, on a federalbasis. Local differences of religion, tradition, custom andcharacter are too great in Germany, he says, for thiscentral rule to succeed .

This, as I think, is the most important thing in all OttoStr;'sser's political thought - at all events, the mostimportant thing for us to-day . At this very moment,statesmen and politicians, plotters and intriguers, areracking their brains to know what sort of Germany shouldbe left after this war - providing, as I say, that it can bedecisively won -and how to ensure that it does notagain arise in awful militarist guise to destroy us, or tryto destroy us .

The first, and vital, condition for that longed-for peace,if I may again interject a word, is that after this war theother countries shall be resolute to crush any new Germanattempt to alter frontiers by force, and shall, not indithering irresolution sit by and watch her destroy onecountry after another until the danger becomes so greatthat they have to rush to arms in a last-minutestampede .

If that resolution does not exist after this war, no con-juring-tricks with words, no appeals to Germany's betterconscience, no urging of others to give Germany a FairDeal, and no new regime in Germany, will preserve thepeace. That is the fundamental condition, and withoutit, no Germany, not Hitler's Germany or Goring'sGermany or a Hohenzollern Germany or even aStrasser Germany, can be counted on to keep the peace,for peacemakers would again be outlawed, tortured and

265

NEMESIS?killed, as they were by Hitler. Not Germany, but we,shall have the peace in our hands after this war, as we hadit in the years 1918 to 1939 .

But assuming that this simple truth somehow pene-trates the minds of people in this country, and that ourpolicy be shaped accordingly, it is nevertheless of theutmost importance that a Germany should arise afterthis war which would be led by men who wanted peaceand which would see that peace paid better. What sortof Germany should it be?To-day, men behind the scenes are playing with

various ideas . They think vaguely of restoring the twoGermanies, the Hohenzollern and the Habsburg Ger-manies, of putting back in power the Houses which theWorld War was fought to oust, the princes whose incor-rigible imperialist ambitions can never be stilled . Othersthink of restoring all the monarchies, of resurrecting allthe `dear little Germanies' of the dear old nineteenthcentury, the little Kings of this and that. Very soon,these little Kings would be swallowed up once more bythe King of Prussia, and the game would begin all overagain .

Otto Strasser's conception of the future structure ofGermany is extraordinarily interesting, considered inthe light of these problems of to-day. It is as if he hadlooked ten years ahead and seen that these problemswould be racking the world . Hitler's reign in Germanyhas proved to be nothing more than the triumph ofPrussia, once again. His one-man-rule from Berlin isjust that, and nothing else. His Grossdeutschland, hisGreater Germany, is nothing but Great Prussia, with

266

`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'everything else in the Prussian stomach, and a newPrussian war of conquest on its hands .

That is why it is so remarkable that Otto Strasser, tenyears ago, should have made the destruction of Prussiathe foundation stone of his proposals for the structure ofthe new German Reich . (It is his main proposal to-day.)

`I know', he wrote, `that every proposal for the dissolu-tion of the Prussian State is attacked as anti-patriotic,because the creative energy of the Prussian spirit wouldallegedly disappear. I know too well the great part thatPrussia and the Prussian spirit have played in the historyof Germany to give way to any anti-Prussian feelingpossibly deriving from my Bavarian homeland . But thevery study of the German character and German historyshow that this Prussian solution for Germany's problemswas but an emergency-outlet, though this does notdiminish the services of Frederick the Great and Bis-marck in using it . In the Liberal era the dominance ofPrussia alone could form a firm basis for the Reich . Butto-day the German people are becoming a nation, andthis demands the melting-down of this exclusive, Prus-sian, little-German spirit and all its manifestations .'It was wrong, he proceeded, to stamp `made in Prussia'on all Germans alike . The times demanded, not thesubordination of all types of German to the one, butthe merging of these types, the wedding of the `Prussian'and the `Austrian' spirit, so that the real German couldbe born of them .

This real German, wrote Otto Strasser in propheticwords which command admiration, for he was writingat a time when Hitler was telling Germany that all the

267

NEMESIS?world, and especially all Europe, was Germany'srelentless enemy, `will then have that European conscience thelack of which is so sinister in the Prussian product' .

I have stressed these words because they are of vitalimportance. Great courage was needed to say them,when they were written ; they ran dead counter to thetide that was then flowing in Germany . They show aman who thinks as men of goodwill in other lands think -a man of peace .For that reason, wrote Otto Strasser, the German

Union of the future must not be centrally governed fromone place. It must be a uniform Reich, but federallyconstructed, in Landschaften (say, Cantons) formed bybreaking-upa,the arbitrarily-born States of to-day . Therewould be from twelve to fifteen Cantons, their boun-daries drawn according to religious, traditional, historical,and stammesmassigen (say, tribal) considerations .

This was a bold proposal in 1930. To-day, it is becom-ing practical politics . It is the only proposal I haveheard that really offers hope of a Germany that after thiswar would collaborate in' the family of Europe . That thisnew Germany should be inspired by the will to peace,depends entirely on the will of others to compel her tokeep the peace ; if that will is lacking, not even OttoStrasser's Germany would keep the peace, because he,or another man like him, would in time be overborneor overthrown by the old, powerful, warmaking groupsinside Germany ; but given such support from outside, . aman like Otto Strasser could make out of Germany aland that wished to keep the peace, because the men whowanted peace would come to the top .

268

`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'His proposal, prophetically inspired as it was, was for

the destruction of Prussia. If Prussia remained, biggerthan all the other German States put together, Prussiawould, he knew, sooner or later impose her sway uponthem all, exclude them from the European family, andlead them to war again - and precisely this happened,through the instrumentality of Hitler .

So Otto Strasser would destroy Prussia, and the otherdynastically-derived States and Statelets, rub out thememories of princely feuds, and draw the map of Ger-many again - in Cantons. Of Prussia, nothing wouldremain but the Brandenburgers, in the historic Mark ofBrandenburg - the Landschaft or Canton Brandenburg .Bavaria would be partitioned to yield the three tribally-derived Cantons of the Bavarians, Swabians and Franks .Hanover, the Rhineland and Hessen would reappear, asCantons . Thuringia would become bigger through theincorporation ofErfurt, Saxony through the incorporationof Magdeburg. Swabia would swallow up Wurttemberg,Baden and the present Bavarian province of Swabia .

In this way the Reich would emerge as a Federationof twelve or fifteen equiponderant Cantons . The oldbogy of Prussian domination, of militarism, of war,would disappear - providing always (this is my inter-jection) that the outer world were resolved to resist anyrebirth of that spirit .

This is, in my view, a scheme that does justice to theGermans, and promises hope for Europe, and for my partI would commend it to the most careful study .How, by whom and by what would this German

Federation be ruled and governed?269

NEMESIS?The principle that the most competent Germans are

those who should come to the leadership of the Stateexcludes, says Otto Strasser, a hereditary monarchy .Human experience does not suggest, and, human prob-ability denies, that qualities can be bequeathed in suchmeasure that the son of a leader should automaticallybecome the next leader of the people . The system ofhereditary rulers is also opposed to the principle thateach member of the nation should have the same start inlife. A system by which a man is assured the highestoffice in the State by reason of his birth is contrary to`German Socialism'. The choice remains between anelected monarchy or a republic . Both have this much incommon, that the head of the State is elected, in thefirst case for life, in the second usually for a limitedterm .

But such limited periods, writes Otto Strasser, carrywith them the danger that the candidate, in order tosecure re-election will make concessions to the electorate,and this in turn endangers the principle of impartialityin his office. It may lead to corruption, to cheap vote-catching methods. These dangers disappear if the headof the State be elected for life. This would give himindependence of the electorate and enable him to makefar-sighted plans, without taking account of the ficklenessof public favour.

So Otto Strasser sees at the head of his federalistGerman Socialist Reich a Reichsprdsident elected for life .History, again, votes for him ; for centuries Germanyknew this form of elected rulers. The name - Emperoror President - is a thing of indifference, he says .

270

`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'Thus the Fourth Reich, as Otto Strasser would build

it on a basis of German Socialism, would have a ReichPresident, a Reich Parliament, and a Reich FederalCouncil. Each Canton would similarly have a CantonalPresident and a Cantonal Parliament, and the ReichFederal Council would be composed of the representa-tives of the Cantons, preferably the Cantonal Presidents .The Federal Council would elect the Reich President, asthe Cardinals the Pope .All parliaments, Reich and Cantonal, would be

elected; not by political parties, however, but by fivecorporative groups : those of the peasants ; the workers ;the employees and officials ; the employers and tradesmen ;and the professions . The workers could only elect aworker, the professional men only one of their own kind,and so on.

Thus it would be impossible for `the workers' and `thepeasants' to be represented in parliament, as they are inmost countries to-day, by _university professors, journal-ists, alien intellectuals and the like conglomeration. Noone group would be allowed more than 49 per cent ofseats in any parliament, but every group must be re-presented ; this to avoid little local dictatorships of farmersin a predominantly rural district, or of workers in anindustrial district. The officials in the Cantons would benatives .

Little more remains for me to say, in this brief summaryof Otto Strasser's German Socialism, than to gather up afew loose ends. Under his Cantonal scheme Austria -if at the referendum which he proposes it decided to staywith the Reich - would immediately emerge as a self-

27!

NEMESIS?governing Austria, called Austria, and administered onlyby Austrian-born officials .

In the Jewish question, Otto Strasser has the deepestcontempt for the methods of Hitler, not only becausethey are vulgar and repugnant, but because they arestupid; the Jewish question has not been solved, anymore than any other question save that of militarism andwar, by these methods, and the sum effect of them has inpractice been a world-wide publicity campaign in favourof the Jews in which the things they have suffered havebeen exaggerated and the evils which they promotedhave been forgotten .Gregor Strasser, as I have told, expelled Julius

Streicher from the party many years ago ; Hitler paidStreicher the most marked honour. Otto Strasser bitterlyattacked Streicher's methods, in the newspapers of hisKampfverlag, the independent attitude of which was themain reason for his quarrel and breach with Hitler, yearsbefore the Hitlerist triumph ; for instance, in an articlepublished in 1928 which was called `Anti-Semitism isdead ; long live the national idea' . In his book onGerman Socialism, similarly, he attacks the `idolatry ofracialism', and indeed, as I have shown in this book,he regards Hitler's racial doctrines as beneath the con-tempt of a thinking or educated man .

But then again, these racial babblings of Hitler are nomore seriously meant than his anti-Bolshevist ravings oranything else that he ever said ; a Jewess, in the meaningof his own anti Jewish Act, was his intermediary inimportant international negotiations with foreign politic-ians. He presented her with his signed portrait, and even

272

POSTSCRIPTgave her a testimonial, through his aide-de-camp, to theeffect that she had made the Munich Agreement possible .Hitler's Gestapo, similarly, habitually uses Jewish agents .

Strasser's view on the Jewish question is the view thatis coming now to be more and more widely accepted -that the Jews are an alien community, with a fiercelyanti-Gentile religion that gives them a concealed inwardfeeling of antagonism towards the non-Jewish commun-ities among which they live, and anti-Gentile religiouslaws far more rabid than Hitler's anti-Jewish laws, whichare but a pallid inversion of them . That being so, and asthey have this inborn, overriding, super-national, inter-national, mutually anti-Gentile allegiance, they cannotclaim, as they do claim, the full and unrestricted rightsand privileges, and more, of the native-born citizens .

`Plenty of Englishmen, for instance', he says, `live inGermany, and trade there, and thrive there, but they donot expect to become leaders of the German people, todominate and even monopolize professions and callingsand trades, to obtrude an alien way of thought and wayof living upon the Germans through literature and news-papers and the stage and the films . Then . why shouldthe Jews feel themselves the victims of discrimination?'

In Otto Strasser's Fourth Reich, therefore, methodsof the Streicher kind would immediately cease . He would.place such restrictions as the welfare of the whole com-munity demands upon the spread of immoderate Jewishinfluence in the thought of the country, in the professions,and, through the power of money, in the control of power.His endeavour would be to find, in agreement with theJews, a means by which they could lead a dignified and

273

NEMESIS?worthy existence in the State, subject to the limits whichtheir own religion, ineradicable traits and implacablerefusal to be assimilated dictate .

He knows that a limited number of Jews always can beassimilated, or as nearly assimilated as makes no odds,particularly in Germany, a country for which nearly allJews feel a deep admiration . He knows too that theunassimilable core always remains and in its works iscovertly hostile to the people among whom it lives . OttoStrasser, incidentally, has no anti-Jewish feeling ; I haveremarked this . He has had Jewish friends and in Prague,as I have shown, he had, or thought he had, a Jewishcollaborator ; this nearly cost him his life, and did costthe life of his best friend . His attitude towards the Jewsin his contemplated Fourth Reich, nevertheless, is one ofconviction, not of prejudice .

His attitude in this question is a further proof of hissincerity, for his years of exile have been always finan-cially straitened and sometimes penurious, and he couldhave had all the financial backing a politician coulddesire if he had modified his views in this particularmatter. About that, I too, as a writer, could sing a song .

In all his political philosophy, Otto Strasser has con-fined himself to the drafting of a `German Socialism' .He believes, as he is entitled to believe, that he knowswhat is good for Germany ; he does not claim or presumeto know what is good for other countries . But he doesthink that the conception of Federation, which he laiddown so long ago for Germany, should ultimately beextended to Europe. To-day, many people are sayingand thinking this ; he said and thought it ten years ago .

274

`A GERMAN SOCIALISM'He thinks indeed as a European, and is one of the veryfew Germans r ever met who do so think .

Many Germans talk as good Europeans, but you needonly to put to them a question deftly designed to prickthe skin - and immediately that spirit which OttoStrasser calls `Prussian', which the world calls `Prussian',peeps out. I did not find this so with Otto Strasser . AsI said and repeat, with Germany the only guarantee ofpeace is for Germany to know that force will recoil uponGermany with even greater force ; if that knowledge is notalways present in the mind of the German masses, theywill sooner or later become again the instruments of thewarmakers, and such men as an Otto Strasser will berepeatedly thrust aside . But all his life and works showthat here is a good German who is a good European .

I think I have given a true picture of Otto Strasser, ofthe man, of his struggles, of his fight against Hitler, of hisideals, of his plans for peace, and of the German SocialistReich which he would set up.For my part, and there can, be few men more wary

about the Germans than I am, as my other books haveshown, I think that this is a German who, if he could,would work for the welfare both of his country and ofEurope - in short, for peace . Whatever the future holdfor him, and for us all, I am glad to have known him andto have written this book.